If your opponent has you in an arm bar, extend an arm out to your side to simulate the hold. Adjust your feet so that you are sideways to him and drive a side kick into his leg. If you are pretending to be bent as a result of a blow or you are trying to make him think you are hurt, adjust your angle so you are sideways to your imaginary target, and drive a side kick into his thigh, knee or shin. Both of these scenarios look a little odd when pantomiming by yourself, so make sure no one is looking in the window.
Arms extended out your sides: 2 sets, 10 reps — each leg
Bent as if struck: 2 sets, 10 reps — each leg
From a bent-over position, adjust your angle so you are sideways to your opponent. As quick as you can, drive a sidekick into his leg or hip.
Movement Continued
Side kick Exercises
These exercises not only build strength in the thrust portion of the kick, but also at the focus point, that place where your leg is extended and your foot is making contact with the target. These are not fun exercises, so don’t expect to have a lot of laughs doing them. They are highly effective, though.
Side kick and hold There are two variations to this exercise, one where you strive to increase the amount of time you hold your leg out, and the other where you push to increase the height of your kick. Both variations greatly improve your balance, muscle control, hip flexibility and all the muscles involved in your support leg. Here is how you do them:
Time: Slowly extend your side kick as high as you can with flawless form, and then hold it at full extension for 10 seconds per rep. Grit your teeth and fight to prevent your leg from sinking. Over the weeks, increase the time to 30 seconds per rep.
1 set, 10 reps, 10- 30-second each — each leg
Height: Slowly extend your leg as high as you can using your hip and leg power. When your leg is fully extended, take hold of your pant leg with your finger tips and pull your leg up as far as you can and hold it there. Be careful not to let your arms do all the work; this is a leg exercise. Hold for 5 seconds and then slowly chamber and return to the floor. That is one rep.
2 sets, 10, 5-second reps — each leg
Seated side kicks Okay, enough fun. Here is one that will put a nice knot in your upper thigh and hip. It’s a seated exercise, so it’s hard to cheat by leaning excessively away from the direction that you are kicking in. The position places considerable strain on the muscles involved in the side kick, so much so that you have to keep telling yourself that this is good for you. Here is how you do it.
Sit in an armless chair and face forward. Lift your right knee in front of you and slowly extend it to the side in a perfect side kick. You can lean your upper body a little, but not too much since you want to make those side kick muscles work. Strive for precise form and for as much height as you can (which won’t be very high) to really get a feel for how those muscles are working. Do slow reps to develop power and fast reps to stimulate your fast-twitch muscles.
Slow chair side kicks: 1 set, 10 reps -- each leg
Fast chair side kicks: 1 set, 10 reps -- each leg
While sitting in a chair, chamber your right leg and slowly extend it into a sidekick .
Movement Continued
Extra credit After you have trashed your muscles doing the chair exercises, finish your workout with this fun drill. The idea is to practice scenarios from your chair as you did with the front kick. Pretend that you are blocking a shoulder grab from the side and counter with a side kick. Leap to your feet and finish him off with whatever you choose. Have fun with it and learn what you can and cannot do while sitting.
Taekwondo fighters definitely don’t throw their roundhouse kicks the same way Muay Thai fighters do. In fact, not all taekwondo and Muay Thai fighters throw their roundhouses in the same fashion. The same is true of the various Chinese, Japanese and American eclectic systems. They all have subtle, or not so subtle, variations that have developed over time either by deliberate intent or happenstance.
Is one method better than the other? Who knows for sure? To conduct a scientific study would be overwhelmingly complex because of the large number of variables that would have to be factored in. My advice is that you first master the method taught in your style and then examine how other styles perform theirs. You may or may not find a method so superior that you want to replace yours, but you probably will find one or more that you want to include in your repertoire.
I encourage you to examine your basic roundhouse kick to learn all the variations that are possible with it. Begin by asking yourself questions about it and then seek out the answers. For example, how can you deliver it faster? More powerfully? How can you better set up your roundhouse to successfully get it in on an opponent, both offensively and defensively?
Kicking with All Parts of Your Leg
Perhaps you learned to roundhouse kick by making contact with only the top of your foot. This is fine, but depending on the circumstances there are actually several other places on your leg that you connect with. Use your solo time to experiment to see how versatile the roundhouse kick really is.
The Ball of the Foot
When I began training back in the 1960s, we learned to roundhouse kick barefoot with the ball of the foot, just as our teachers learned in the Orient. That was okay until I was in the military. On several occasions in Vietnam, I kicked people with the ball of my foot while wearing combat boots. I curled my toes back as I had done in class, but the heavy, steel-toed boot didn’t curl, so every time I ended up limping afterwards with a sprained ankle and jammed toes. Since I’m a slow learner, I hurt myself several times before it dawned on me what I was doing wrong. When I changed to kicking with the shoestring area of my boot, the problem went away.
But don’t let my experience discourage you from considering the ball of the foot as an impact point. Perhaps you wear really flexible shoes and you can kick with the ball of your foot while wearing them (they aren’t those gold-colored ones that curl up on each end, are they?). Or maybe you train for other reasons than self-defense, so it doesn’t matter to you that you can’t curl your toes back in your street shoes.
To be completely confident kicking with the ball of the foot, I highly suggest that you practice on the heavy bag. Take it easy at first, because a bent-back toe is not a fun moment to live in. Although you can use the ball of the foot to kick any target, from your opponent’s head to his shin, I think it’s a big risk to kick someone in the head with it. If your foot is angled wrong, a jammed toe against someone’s hard skull is going to send you spiraling to the floor, wailing like a newborn babe.