Originally posted by stuff
I’m having a bunch of trouble with my WC sidekick. I’m used to the TKD sidekick since thats what I used to do. I feel a major lack of power. Any suggestions?
quote:
To pivot past 90 degrees with you base foot here messes up your rooting for the kick.
I’m not so sure. If your foot is at 90, the reactionary force is going to be moving straight across your foot. If it’s at 180, I think you actually have much better control over your balance, though I would agree recovery definitely takes longer.
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OK guys. I, like stuff, studied TKD back in my teens. It was very difficult to adjust to the WC sidekick. Basically, the power comes from the forward momentum of your body + the horizontal stomp of the leg, the way to generate this power is to get your body moving forward, like with the exchange step (bring your rear foot to your front then kick with lead leg). Or, by kicking from the rear leg with momentum. If you are straining to get the correct hip position, it will take away the power of the kick, so you may have trouble at first. Also remember that there is a version of the kick without much power or body movement that is used more for checking/bothering. In answer to Anerlich, because your momentum is moving forward, that counter acts the backwards force created by Newton’s third law. Again I draw the parallel to a front kick - in the front kick, your base foot does not point back, yet you should not fall over when you kick something solid, because you perform the kick with forward momentum. In practicality, I rarely acheive the 90 degree placement of the base leg, more like 100+ degrees, but it is a goal I work for. There is another version that I do which is at about 125 degrees back, and more lean back in the direction of the base foot, this will take you out of range of the opponent’s punches and is less committed. Should have used that one yesterday: I went for a side-kick with sloppy form and my sifu sidestepped it and rang my bell with a whipping punch. Remember that each kick has it’s use, one of my goals with the unpivoted kick is to be able to engage the opponent with my arms, from a sitting horse (side-on) stance and just lift up the rear foot and kick - meaning that the base foot is going to be at less than 90 degrees from the opponent. My Sifu told me once that TKD and Karate have specific angles that they strive to kick from, while in CMA kicks come from any angle. Basically I want to be able to throw kicks in a continuum from outwardly turned front kick to inwardly turned front/side mix to a fully pivoted TKD kick (also called Tiger’s tail kick in some lineages.)
Another major use of the unpivoted side kick: low targets. You won’t find as much trouble with this. Let’s say you’ve just executed one of the aformentioned leg blocks. For decent stability, your base leg is going to be about 50-55 degrees from front. If you follow up with a low sidekick without setting your leg down, you don’t want to pivot from there, except maybe slightly. You may find that your kicking foot isn’t exactly parallel to the ground - doesn’t matter if it points slightly up, as long as the contact area is correct.
P.S. I still find the ol’ step-behind sidekick from TKD to be a good method of delivering a pivoted sidekick. The only way I’ve modified it is to not place my foot down a full 180 degrees back, since I no longer practice this way.
P.P.S. Using a TKD sidekick is like walking around with the biggest, heaviest gun. While sometimes what you want is a lighter, concealable, easier to draw, fast gun that still packs a decent punch, and you won’t get it caught in a narrow passageway. My apologies for a crappy analogy but I hope you get the point.
Just my opinions!!
-FJ