The Fastest, Hardest Kick In All Of Tae Kwon Do
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
I call this move, no matter what type of martial art you do it with, the pop kick. Whether you do a wheel, a side, or a snap, the basic principle doesn’t change. You replace the left foot with the right foot, and place the right foot on the target…this all has to happen simultaneously.
By same time I mean that the left foot and the right foot start together, and the right foot hits the ground at the same time the left foot impacts. By doing it in this fashion the whole body gets smaller at the same time, then the whole body explodes. This causes a very pure energy pop in the energy center, which is a point a couple of inches below the navel, which is also called the tan tien.
In addition to the purity of explosion you will feel in the tan tien, which will tend to concentrate energy in the kick, you will experience a sudden weight on the support leg at the same moment you experience weight in the kicking leg. This sudden weight tends to make the explosion of energy even more pure and violent, and yet tends to control it precisely. This will supercharge your technique.
If you are doing this technique with a snap kick, make sure you get the knee high enough so that the foot comes in straight, and doesn’t slide up the front of the target. If you are doing a side kick, make sure you turn the hips so that the weight of them really slams into the target. If you are doing a wheel kick, make sure you get the hips up high enough so that the kick can fly in truly horizontal.
The fourth type of kick would be a spin pop to the rear, and utilizes the side kick. You would practice all four kicks against a wall, learning how to contract the legs simultaneously, and explode the legs outward to impact at the same time. You don’t have to hit the wall with power, use power on a bag, control will actually give you more power anyway.
We used to have all kinds of set ups for these techniques. We would slap the attacker’s guard hands as we pre-stepped, and the we would do it subtle, and then be in the kick before the target knew we were on our way. As we practiced the explosion would get finer and more pure and more full of energy.
Make sure you use it in a variety of stances, and you will have a truly expanded arsenal of martial arts weapons. This is a great kick to practice, and it is born of the successful union of karate power and TKD kicks. Japanese martial arts or Korean martial arts, this is the fastest kick, and the hardest kick, and perhaps the most effective kick I know.
Read the latest articles and get some truly hard core information on how to have the strongest kicks you can have at Punch ‘Em Out. 2
Incoming search terms for the article:
