Practice kicking the bag at all heights so you are familiar with how your foot position needs to be modified. But if you just want to kick at one height, say the abdomen or to mid thigh, concentrate your bag work at that level.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 15 reps —each foot
Air: 3 sets, 15 reps — each foot
Shoestring Area
The most common impact point for the roundhouse kick is the top of the foot where your shoestrings are laced. Since it’s a broad surface, it lacks the penetration that kicking with the ball-of-the-foot has, but it’s safer on your toes. Should you kick someone in the point of his chin, you risk breaking the fine bones on the top of your foot, but it’s relatively safe when kicking to non boney surfaces. Kicking with the top of the foot is effective in competition because it provides you with several inches of reach versus kicking with the ball.
Any target from the side of the face to the calf is good, but be cautious of kicking boney surfaces. The kidneys, ribs, groin and thighs are favorites because impact to them can cause debilitation.
Air: 3 sets, 15 reps — each leg.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 15 reps — each leg
Lower Shin
Muay Thai fighters believe so much in the effectiveness of kicking with their lower shin, that portion of the leg 6 to 10 inches above the ankle, that they use it almost exclusively to knock their opponents into Tweety Bird land. They believe that the foot is weak and that it lacks support. The shin, however, is a hard and thick bone that when slammed at 60 mph into a human target, the target loses.
If you haven’t used the lower shin as an impact point, the hardest part of kicking with it is making the mental adjustment to do so. First, you have to implant the idea in your mind to use it. Secondly, you have to adjust your range from the target. Since you are kicking with an area that is higher up on your leg, you need to be about 12 inches closer to the target than when kicking with the top of your foot. Once the mental and physical adjustments are made, you will wonder why you didn’t kick with your shin before.
Begin by thinking shin as you practice your reps in the air, and aim it at your imaginary target on each rep.
Air reps: 3 sets, 20 reps — each leg
If you have tender shins, wear your shin guards when kicking the heavy bag. With the added padding, you can slam it hard without screaming out in pain and hopping around on one leg.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 20 reps —each leg
Roundhouse Knee
Moving up the leg (do I sound like a travel guide?), we come to the boney knee cap. First a warning. Have you ever bumped knees with your training partner? What a laugh riot, huh? It’s for that painful reason that it’s not a good idea to deliberately slam your knee cap against a boney surface on your opponent’s body, such as his skull, knee, shin or elbow. You can get away with hitting a hard surface if you make impact a couple of inches above or below your knee, but if you hit with your knee cap, you may find yourself as out of commission as your opponent. To be safe, strike only soft targets on your opponent.
You can execute a roundhouse-knee strike with either your front or rear leg. The front is fastest, since it’s closest to the target, and your rear leg is strongest since it’s traveling the greatest distance and gets help from your hip rotation. To add power to the impact, grab your opponent’s shoulders or the back of his neck, and pull him in hard as you drive your round knee into him. The direction follows the same circular track as your roundhouse kick. Pull his body forward, rotate your hips and drive your knee in hard. Rise up on the ball of your foot at the point of impact to deliver just a little more energy into the target. It’s a great technique to slip under an opponent’s arms or to drive into the side of his thigh.
Simulate grabbing with both your hands behind your imaginary opponent’s neck to pull him toward you, and drive in your round knee.
Air reps: 3 sets, 15 reps — each knee
With the heavy bag, grab the top of it and pull toward you as you ram in your knee. Be sure to rotate your hips for maximum power.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 15 reps — both knees
Kicking with the Thigh
Although this is seldom used, it’s a great technique for punishing an attacker who tries to pull you in close for a clinch. The direction of force is circular and the striking area is your thigh, that place just above your knee to about mid-thigh. The leg is held the same as when executing the round knee strike, and the hips are rotated in the same fashion. Timing-wise, it works great when the two of you are about 12 inches apart and moving toward each other.
You need to fire it off quickly because once you are in the clinch, you are too close for the blow to have sufficient impact. Even when you are in the ideal range, the blow is not terribly powerful since your thigh doesn’t travel far enough to build significant momentum. Nonetheless, it’s still capable of whooshing the air out of your opponent when you drive it into his ribs, especially right under the bottom one, or make him dizzy when you hit him in the head. The impact can be increased by pulling your opponent into the blow.
Simulate holding onto your opponent and pull him into the blow.
Air reps: 3 sets, 15 reps — each side
Pull from the top of the heavy bag to simulate pulling your opponent into your kick. Be sure to bend you’re your leg as you kick because driving your thigh into the bag with a straight leg may hyperextend your knee, which is in the Top 5 of things you can do to yourself that really, really hurt.
Heavy bag: 3 sets, 10 reps – both sides
Roundhouse Kick Exercises
Here are a couple of exercises that add power, speed and dexterity to all of your roundhouse kick variations.
Sacrifice roundhouse kick I doubt the effectiveness of this concept in a real fight, but it’s a fun trick to use in your school sparring and in competition. It develops flexibility, speed and power in your legs, so if you don’t have those elements yet, don’t try this technique against an opponent. Instead, use this as an exercise to develop those attributes. Spend time training alone on this and when you can do it quick as a wink, take it to your class and surprise your buddies with it.
The roundhouse kick is arguably the easiest offensive leg technique to do in karate, so much so that it’s the most often used in class and in competition. It’s easy to do, and it’s also easy to block, even by students with just a couple of months training. And that is okay, because you are going to use that to your advantage.
Face the mirror with your left side forward. Step up with your rear foot and throw a roundhouse kick