ive developed pretty solid low kicks but recently I've noticed that my body and head kicks are not as strong. Is it normal to loose some power as you go higher with your roundkicks?
you always lose power the higher you go, but i find high kicks are used less frequent than the lower kicks so if you want to strengthen them, you need to practice them as much or more than your lower kicks
If you have the flexibility then you need the proper conditioning The best way to build this is high slow kicking. Get your leg up in position and extend and recoil it very slowly as long as you can stand it. Then do it some more. That one thing Bill Superfoot Wallace really emphasizes.
Besides LOTS and LOTS of kicking, you can supplement your conditioning with a few exercises to strengthen and speed up the muscle groups around your hips. 1. Sprints: They build the fast twitch muscle fibers in your hips. Just visualize every kick of your leg as a strike, you'll go faster. 2. Circles: Hold on to a structure roughly waist high with one hand and stand on one foot. Raise your leg straight out in front of you or to the side and make small circles no bigger than a basketball, concentrating on keeping an even plain between your leg and the floor. Do this for about 45-50 sec with 10 sec rest inbetween. 3. Roman Chair leg lifts: pretty simple here, just seat yourself in the arm rests and raise your legs up past parrallel 15-30 reps for 3 sets or whatever you can handle. 4. Lunges: Get into a lunge position and jump up, alternating the foot of the lunge. 5. Squat Jumps: Squat down and jump up as high as you can.
Stretch and practice high sounds very simple but works. My body/high kicks are actually more powerful than my lowkicks I think, because I've done kickboxing (with no lowkicks) and karate, so i haven't really practiced it.
The power doesn't come from the snap in your leg, it's from turning your body. Three things need to move in unison: your base foot, hips, and shoulders. Chamber your knee and then turn all of those three things quickly and in unison and then all of your body weight should be behind the kick. I train Muay Thai now, but I grew up with Tae Kwon Do. People knock it, but I do have better high kicks than anyone in my MT class.
you could try "pushing off" the ground with your kicking leg to get that foward acceleration, rather then chambering let it hang naturally while you raise the kick to desired level and then cut it across by lining up the kick and turning your hips into it. the higher th ekick the more you should notice that your supporting leg will twist... you could also try going straight to the target, rather then gonig straight up and then cut across either with chambering or a straightfollow through, try kicking up at an angle with the most direct path. sort of like.... straight up 45 degrees to the midsection...
kickboxing? Once I started practicing my high kicks more I noticed the low kicks actually improved as well.
Are you kicking beyond your comfortable range? As the antagonistic muscles begin to reach their full range of flexibility they will begin to contract to protect themselves. This will slow your motion down and will take power off of your kick. Kick within your range. If you want to increase your range forget static stretching. Use dynamic stretching. I don't mean ballistic stretching which will quickly injure you. I use only dynamic stretching. I am 48 and I can kick over my head height cold any time of day. Not bragging about my ability. Its just that dynamic stretching works.
Might need to stretch more, if to get high your really pushing the limits of your flexibility your going to be losing a huge amount of power. My suggestions are do extra stretching and practice doing lots of high kicks on the bag. My kicks used to be low and I would just practice doing a 2-3 hand tech's on a bag followed by a high kick over and over and over. Now I can get it to my head high easy.
Where, in your opinion, is the best webpage I or anyone else could learn about dynamic stretching. Or maybe you could just give a brief introduction on the basic principles?
It is really easy. Let's use the groin area for an example. Us TKD guys like to get that really high side kick and the ability to sit in a full split. We can argue all day about whether or not it is useful or practical to be able to side kick that high. But, you can't argue about the fact that flexibility can be useful even on the ground (look at BJ Penn) and that it can help prevent injury. 1. Find something to hold onto so that balance is not of concern. 2. Begin to swing your leg like a pendulum. 3. On its way down let it pass your support leg before sending it on its way up again. 4. Slowly increase the height until you are near your full range of motion. As you get close to your full range of motion add a little muscle power to GENTLY lift the leg just a little higher on each swing. The lifting is done near the end of the swing by muscling the leg higher. DO NOT LET THE MOMENTUM OF YOUR LEG CARRY YOUR LEG HIGHER IN A BALLISTIC FASHION. THIS WILL ONLY LEAVE YOU WITH A TORN MUSCLE OR WORSE. 5. Keep increasing the height slightly for about 10-12 reps. Rest and do the other leg. 6. You are training your nervous system more than you are training your muscles. Your lack of range is caused in great part by your nervous system trying to protect your muscles by causing them to contract when you near your full range of motion. 7. Don't start kicking until you at least stretch your hamstring also. Start over at number one only this time swing the leg strait in front of you and allow it to swing back beyond the support leg on the way down. It is that simple. If you do this properly in the morning you will find that you can operate at near full range later in the day with little or no warm up. I have been doing and teaching this for over 20 years. Everyone that I know who has tried it has had great success. You can increase your range more in a few days that you normally can in a few years. If I ever do any static stretching I leave it for the end of the day. It still has its place but it fatigues the muscles. If done before a workout it leaves your muscles tired and more vulnerable to injury. Also, strong, painful static stretching will cause micro tears in the muscle fibers. This will cause inflammation and the pain will cause your body to try to protect itself by contracting the muscle which will cause more tearing... I know that I repeated myself a few times but I really get tired of watching people injure themselves trying to increase their flexibility. OK, I know someone is going to flame me but give it a try first. You may have second thoughts.
Not on the stretching part as much but on the suggestion of limited antagonists. If you look at the stretch response, the second you have experienced slight pain from stretching, your body has already gone into protection mode. You are stretching against that. Too many people think you need pain to stretch.
I understand and I agree. That is the part that almost no one understands. Like you said, they think that they need to stretch to the point of pain to gain flexibility when it does the opposite or at least does damage. Sure, over time they gain some flexibility but at the price of wasted time and wear on their body. Most instructors still push this kind of stretching along with duck walks and on-your-back leg raises. Oh yeah, and they need to jump on your abs every now and then.
