I went for the lake run on Friday and as I was jogging round I tried spicing it up with some knee raises to prepare for a jumping front kick (ee dan ahp chagi). Little did I know that these exercises have a name! I was mooching around on YouTube and found this, it's pretty much what I was doing (although not as sharp) and called the Quick Step Drill :
And today I was playing with ee dan ahp chagi in the garden and was looking at distance covered. The distance I covered in a non-forced jump front kick was 2metres 25 (2 metres 50 with a walking prelude-this is more aggressive but not running). That's the distance covered over the ground (which I was going for), not in height. I was also trying to see whether getting the knee higher would make the kick higher, but my experiments seem inconclusive: I was kicking ~1metre 80 for both the normal knee raise prelude and the high knee prelude. Oh well. I think more importantly is the speed of this first action (the step up with the non-kicking leg).
Plus there has to be a fluid motion right through from the first step through the leg change and into the kick. It's ok to break it down for beginners but fairly soon they should practice the entire movement to avoid a: knee raise-pause-lurch upwards-kick off back leg. The momentum really helps. Sensei DD made a good point in that the first 'feint' should be convincing. It's pointless to make a cursory flash with the first foot raise. Maybe this is the important reason for raising that knee high in the first place. Who wants to kick higher than 1metre 80 anyway!?
Another interesting running drill to try from Jabari Pride, which may help out with kicking:
4 comments:
I know that lake! I used to live in Impington about 12 years ago.
Jump kicks are definately the hardest one to master, they seem to take a lot more coordination that other kicks. I had great difficulty getting any height into them initially, probably because I was doing it in stages like you described. But now I can do a mean jump kick if I want to. One of sensei's favourite exercises is to get us to do 10 jump kicks on each leg while a partner holds a pad up high for you to kick - it's a real killer!
Hey that's cool!
Nice lake isn't it? Shame about the A14!
Jump kicks can be, as you say, a killer but they can be really satisfying too, don't you find?!
There's nothing like a great jump kick when you're feeling down...
haha! those videos are hilarious! But very interesting...
Also makes me wonder how funny martial arts training looks. Maybe we should get some videos some time.
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