2022-07-25

2022-07-25, Monday

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

In last night’s adult class, we spent a good deal of time on combinations that include a front-leg front kick between two other techniques. (e.g Age uke, mae-ashi mae geri, gyaku zuki) The problem we kept trying to solve was the placement of the front knee before the kick. When moving forward with any speed at all, the tendency is to “reserve” the front knee - to place it behind the front foot in anticipation of having to unload the front leg to execute the kick. However, when moving backward this doesn’t happen. (Incidentally, this is very easy to see if you use your phone to film yourself, in slow motion, from the side.) Why?

Unfortunately, it may just be subconscious laziness. When moving forward, it’s easier to move the knee less forward, which results in the knee ending up too far back. This causes the center of gravity to be too far back which, in turn, causes the hip to rock backward during the kick, resulting in a sort of “zero sum” scenario whereby the backward motion of the hip cancels out part of the forward motion of the leg. But when moving backward, it’s easier to move the knee less backward, which results in the knee being too far forward, and that’s not really going to cause a problem because it doesn’t affect the center of gravity. If anything it’ll cause the hip to rock forward, adding to the kick’s power.

So how do you fix this? Simple - slow it down and put a pause between the first and second techniques of the combination until the form of the front stance is perfect … and then launch the kick. If the second technique (the front-leg front kick) is the problem, don’t “rob” from the quality of the first technique to make it better. Instead, isolate and complete the first technique and then add the second technique. To put that another way, improve the second technique and add it to the first rather than “averaging out the bad” between both.