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I would simply argue that not every strike needs to be debilitating in order to be effective. Most jabs aren't knockout-worthy, but the jab remains a critical piece of any effective boxer's arsenal. The inside leg kick does damage.
Further, the inside leg kick is an important weapon to attack the opponent's footwork and disrupt their planned steps or kicks.
...
13
Height gives a considerable advantage to striking martial arts. The first and most obvious advantage is that height means you can reach out further than your opponent, meaning you can hit him before he hits you.
But there are other advantages that you don't immediately consider:
If you have to punch upwards towards a taller opponent's head, you don't punch ...
12
The subject of "puncher vs. kicker vs. wrestler" comes up a lot in martial arts. The general philosophy that's put forward is: "Don't box a boxer. Don't kick a kicker. Don't wrestle a wrestler."
The idea is that you don't want to fight someone on their terms. You need to take them out of their element, where they have no training and therefore become lost ...
10
There are 2 places where you can check a kick : the knee and the shin. If you check with your own shin bone, you are creating a shin to shin contact and, intuitively, one can expect the damage to be similar for both opponents. However, while the location of the hit will be similar, the results, at least if you want to talk about physics, will be very ...
10
Improve your leg Strength.
Do this first because it feeds into any activity requiring balance.
Try:
Hindu squats. These are great because they have you coming up on the ball of your foot while squatting low.
Dynamic/Plyometric squats. For example, box-jumping. It's simple, just get a crate or some of those stackable aerobics platforms. Squat and jump ...
10
You didn't give a specific problem you're having, so, it's hard to say what might be the problem.
There are two primary elements to the kick: the chamber and the thrust. There is your starting position, but, there can be many. Do you kick with the front leg or the back? Is it a stepping behind or a stepping ahead? Is it a standing front leg kick? Are ...
9
It's supposed to be hard
All serious training is supposed to remain difficult and challenging. If, as you say, you have improved your ability to get through warm-ups and training in general, then you're improving. You will keep improving the more you train.
Key word: sporadically
Regular training gets you more fit more quickly than irregular training. The ...
9
The speed increase from kicking with ankle weights and then removing them doesn't demonstrate any improvement. It demonstrates that it's easier to kick correctly and quickly without adding resistance. The fact that the kicks feel faster than before using the weights doesn't prove anything.
Don't kick with ankle weights. If you want stronger legs, then use ...
9
Unfortunately, some martial arts as practiced in the training hall are unsuitable for general use in street fights.
The danger with high kicks is not just the surface as mentioned by cs1971, there are other factors too:
high kicks are slower (they have further to travel)
you are more vulnerable during the delivery and retraction stages of the kick
...
8
Given that women are extremely well represented in Gymnastic competitions, I think it's fair to say that women are quite capable of doing aerobatic flips with kicks.
Edit to add: Other than maybe standing up and p***ing into a moving shot-glass, there isn't anything that women aren't capable of.
8
Your shin can break if you kick someone very hard and they block just right and all conditions align against you. You can break your hand punching someone, even aiming to soft targets like the ribs. You can blow out your knee throwing someone with ouchigari. You can get concussed into unconsciousness taking someone down with a double-leg if they time their ...
8
Is there a way to escape/ defend yourself from tornado kick?
Ummm... yes. If there wasn't, all martial arts would only practice tornado kicks, but in fact relatively few martial arts use the technique. Those kicks are horribly telegraphed, which means the defender have a lot of warning and time to decide what to do to defend or counter-attack. They're ...
8
Any conditioning exercise that can prevent concussion caused by a punch or kick to the head or neck?
My first piece of advice is to see a doctor. If you are suffering something other than a concussion, that's important to know. However, if you are suffering concussions, you are risking your health in a serious way, and that's even more important to know.
Concussions ARE brain damage
All the current science points to the fact that concussions produce ...
8
In the official Kukkiwon (WT/WTF) Taekwondo Terminology guide published in 2012 the listing is:
Mireo-chagi(밀어차기): Pushing Kick
A technique of pushing the opponent with the foot
This is a pushing technique to make the opponent fall or to maintain some distance with him or her by using the ball or sole of the foot.
use
► Mireo-ap-chagi /...
7
Despite ice's enduring popularity and former recommendations for its use in RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) treatment, ice is no longer recommended for reducing inflammation or bruising. Gabe Mirkin, MD, who first coined the RICE mnemonic, explains on his blog dated Sept 2015 that ice delays recovery from injury.
PhysicalTherapyWeb tells a similar ...
7
There are no such things as "street fighting" martial arts. Each martial art has its own story for how it came to exist and how it has evolved over the years.
Wing Chun kung-fu, for example, is often called a "street fighting" art, but it is nothing of the sort. The founder of that art had a specific purpose in mind for it, and that purpose was to allow ...
7
While "back kick" is mostly synonymous with "side kick" in most martial arts, there are styles that do have a back kick that is subtly but very significantly different than a side-kick. This is perhaps what you're picking up on.
In a side kick, you will raise your leg up and inwards, chambering the kicking leg in a position whereby the kicking leg is ...
7
Chambering is an analogy drawn from firearms. In firearms, you chamber a round (put a bullet in the chamber). In the same way as you chamber a round in firearms, you can chamber a kick to "fire" it. This is very probably an American saying in martial arts.
When one refers to chambering a technique (any technique, but in this case a kick), they mean fully ...
7
One name it goes by in Japanese martial arts is Do Mawashi Kaiten Geri, sometimes known as the "forward roll axe kick". It does appear in other styles. In Capoeira, it's often referred to as an Aú Chibata and differs in that actually rolling, rather than springing forward on your hands, is considered to be bad form.
7
ROLLING THUNDER
Kyokushin competition is also the home of the rolling thunder, or Do mawashi geri / Kaiten geri. Because of the rules it is relatively low risk, but tremendously high reward. Bouts are fought so close in, and so ferociously, that a quick push away is almost guaranteed to have the opponent lunging back in. And, if you've been trading body ...
7
"what's the point in high kicks if you can't use them in real life"
Just because you can't - currently - doesn't mean others can't, or that you couldn't.
It can vary a lot by kick - for example, some people (me for example) find mae geri (front kick) much easier to deliver high and "cold" than mawashi geri, or even uchi and/or soto geri, or ushiro mawashi ...
6
A simple practical exercise that will improve your kicking balance: Do straight leg kicks without ever setting the kicking leg down.
You don't have to do them aggressively or high at first. Even a 30 or 45 degree kick is sufficient to start you off. But when the leg returns, either don't set it down, or do the lightest toe-touch possible.
Gentle, ...
6
National Geographic did a fight science segment on martial arts kicks, featuring karate, tae kwon do and muay thai against capoeira.
I was a little disappointed, in that they had Simon Rhee (karate) doing a front kick. Just because of the angles, motion and muscle involvement you will never get a front kick that outperforms a round or side kick. (Especially ...
6
The short answer is that you should land it when all your opponent's weight is on that leg. Either while kicking, or leaning forward. Just know that kicking close to the knee while your opponent is performing a kick has a big chance of dislocation his knee and screwing it up for the rest of his life. Which is one of the reasons I had to retire from serious ...
6
Your master has been doing this stuff for several years (hopefully), so obviously he'll look better at it. It took me a good 6 months to be able to kick above my head and 2 years before I could do a full split. That didn't stop me from being successful in Taekwondo.
You need more than just flexibility for high kicks though. You also need strong core muscles,...
6
I've covered this briefly in another answer, but splits don't help kicks.
You should, in around 6 weeks be able to achieve your maximum kicking height doing dynamic stretches (leg swings).
Each morning, do between 1 to 3 sets of 10 leg swings to the front, side and back. You don't need to force this or feel pain, just swing until you can't swing any ...
6
FWIW, after struggling similarly (and being given many different stretches and training methods to "fix" it) I had an MRI done and found out that my hips are formed in such a way that it is essentially impossible for me to kick above the mid-section from the side. No amount of training could ever overcome this. The only way to fix it would be to have my hip ...
6
Karate and Tae Kwon Do have a lot of overlap. So many of the techniques will be very similar.
However, the slight differences cause more issues as you get to a higher level.
The best way to improve at something is usually to practice that thing.
For kicking start low and make sure you are getting the technique right (it is more important that you generate ...
6
The setup for one of these kicks is ridiculous, and I question if there is even a significant power difference between one and a well delivered roundhouse or side kick. I feel good footwork is the best defense, since anything except a stationary target is going to foil the effectiveness of execution. I'm a big, aggressive fighter, and I always step inside ...
6
It's definitely not a tornado kick (dolgae chagi, 돌개 차기). It has a number of names, Americans tend to use wheel kick, in Korea it's more commonly known as a back whip kick and in the UK we tend to use one of "reverse turning kick" or "back hook kick".
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