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Learn How To Kick - Kicking Effectively In A Self-Defense Or Combat Situation Part 7 Of 10

Author: Shawn Kovacich
Date Posted: April 08, 2007

This ten article series will deal with the various components that need to be addressed when considering the utilization of a particular kick in a combat or self-defense situation. These ten components can also be used by the tournament competitor although certain segments would have to be modified slightly for the tournament aspects of kicking, rather than the more intensive nature of using a kick or kicks in combat. Although all of these individual components are important, they are most effective when combined together and utilized correctly when executing a kick.

Although I will only be discussing one of the components in this article, here is the complete list of all ten of them.

1. Your Kicking Ability
2. Your Intended Application
3. The Environment
4. Telegraphing
5. Striking Implement
6. Striking the Correct Target
7. Initial Impact
8. Impact
9. Retraction or Follow Through
10. Return to Fighting Position

Component Seven; Initial Impact:

As an afterthought, I guess I should have entitled this particular component, “Initial Moment before Impact,” because everything leading up to this particular moment is essential to the effectiveness of your kick upon its intended target.

Your entire body should have been in what I refer to as a “relaxed state of tension” from the moment you first initiated your kick until right at this exact moment. A relaxed muscle is faster yet weaker, while a tense muscle is slower yet more powerful. To give you an analogy of this, let’s look at the following scenario.

You have a brick wall that needs to come down and you have two vehicles at your disposal to complete this task. You have a Lamborghini and a bulldozer. Which one would you use? Obviously, you would use the bulldozer. Now let’s throw in another factor. Both vehicles are approximately 1 mile away and you have a time limit of one minute to knock the building down. What do you do?

Well, its going to be pretty hard to go one mile in a minute with a bulldozer, but really easy to do in a Lamborghini. However, I don’t know about you, but I sure wouldn’t want to use a Lamborghini to knock down a brick wall. Unless of course it belonged to someone that I wasn’t too fond of, Hee Hee Hee! So how do we solve this problem? Well, if we had the ability to morph the vehicles into one, you could use the speed of the Lamborghini traveling at say 200+ mph to cover the one mile distance and then immediately prior to impact, you transform the Lamborghini into the bulldozer. Just imagine what this would do to the wall.

This is exactly what you want to do when delivering your kicks, or any striking technique for that matter. Immediately prior to making contact with your intended target, your entire body should momentarily tighten up in order to put the entire weight and momentum of your body into your kick.

Final Thoughts:

An excellent training method to develop this technique is to literally kick a wall. How you want to do this, is to execute your kick at a very slow speed while maintaining strict form and control. As soon as your foot touches the wall, tighten up your entire body as you attempt to push your foot through the wall. This should be a momentarily tightening of the body, not an extended effort. After tightening your entire body for just a moment, immediately relax and slowly bring your foot back down to its original starting position. I recommend performing this training technique with all of your primary kicks at least 10 repetitions on each leg at least twice a week.

Please make sure that you do not actually put your foot through the wall. This can get very expensive and usually doesn’t make certain people (landlords, parents, significant others) very happy.

About The Author

Shawn Kovacich has been practicing the martial arts for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of 4th degree (Yodan) black belt in both Karate and Tae Kwon Do. Shawn has also competed in such prestigious full-contact bare knuckle karate competitions as the Shidokan Open and the Sabaki Challenge, among others. In addition to his many accomplishments, Shawn is also a two time world record holder for endurance high kicking as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. Shawn is the author of Hook Kick the seventh volume in the highly acclaimed Achieving Kicking Excellenct series. of martial arts books, and is currently working on several additional marital arts and self-defense books. Which are due to be released in 2007.

Article Source: JKD Street Combat - online collection of articles on self-defense.

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