help on my kicks please!!!!

[chris_มวยไทย]

hi, i have exelent technique in my kicks and kicks and knees are my best attributes, but i need help in making them stronger.

at the moment about 10 mins of my daily training is kicking, and i also do about 8 mins of kicking drills a day. i also go to the gym twice a week and do about half an hour of kicking altogether and about 10 mins of kicking drills. And i bike ride for about 15-20 mins a day

but apart from technique, having stronger muscles should help, so if anyone has any information on what muscles i would need to build up for roundhouse kicks and what exercises (without weights) i could do to help build up those muscles.

im asking this becasue i dont want to be doing exersises and building the wrong muscles, as i know nothing about weight lifting and body building (as you can probably tell lol).


any help will be greatly apreciated!

thanks,

chris

 

[thaistyle]

Well Chris, here are a few exercises that may help you out. Walking lunges and squats with or without weights help build strength and power in the legs and hip structure. Also, try running sprints for 40-60 yards 2-3 times a week instead of biking. The sprint is an explosive exercise and it works the leg muscles similar to a heavy squat. You may or may not be overtraining your legs just a bit. If you are overtrained, just take some time off from kicking for a week, it will give your legs the needed rest. You may not be overtrained though, it could be a need to be build some muscle/muscular endurance in those legs of yours. I think your current problem is fairly common among muay thai students. Remember that the legs muscles get a lot of work at home, at work , when exercising and during martial arts training. Lastly, don't forget to stretch. Flexibility has a tremendous role in how powerful your kicks are. I hope this help you out of your rut. Good luck.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Lastly, don't forget to stretch. Flexibility has a tremendous role in how powerful your kicks are. I hope this help you out of your rut. Good luck.

That was my first thought.

Could it be you are building muscle and creating a situation where your leg muscles are actually impeding your power due to a lack of flexibility?

Basically training for too much strength.

 

[Thunder Foot]

Well, reading your first post Chris... this makes me chuckle, because I don't really know anyone who refers to their own kicking technique as being "excellent", but then asks for help, hehehe.

All teasing aside, the best way to develop more power in your kicking.... is by, KICKING! You may think your technique is flawless, but you'll find the more you do it, the more precise in the movement that you'll become. And with multiple repetitions, you'll see that you will further develop the necessary muscles needed for good kicks. You can try ladders, or stacks with your kicks. Try to land somewhere between 500-1000 kicks a day.

So in short, KICK MORE! :asian:

 

[Stimpy]

I don't know too much about that stuff either but everything I've read says that heavy squats are the best exercise you can do period, I can only presume they would help your roundhouse kick power.

 

[chris_มวยไทย]

Well, reading your first post Chris... this makes me chuckle, because I don't really know anyone who refers to their own kicking technique as being "excellent", but then asks for help, hehehe.

ah what i meant is that i have powerful kicks, and kicking is what im best as (as i said before), i just want them to be more powerful, i was always good at kicking and rubbish at everything else, but then i trained everything, so now im fairly good at striking with "all 8 points of contact", but the problem is that i have trained everything else up and now my punches have cought up with my kicks so to speak, thats why i want harder kicks, becasue ive always found them more comfortable to use, but now they are not as powerful compard to my punches as they used to be.

 

[zDom]

All teasing aside, the best way to develop more power in your kicking.... is by, KICKING!

Exactly what I would have advised if Thunder Foot hadn't done so first

If I can add to that, do heavy bag work. Practice sinking your body weight into the bag with the kick.

 

[exile]

So, what I've found to be a great help is working on balance exercises, alternating with power/accuracy exercises. For roundhouse kicks, this kind of training takes a particular form: if you can be perfectly—and I mean perfectly!—balanced on your supporting leg, you can deliver powerful, high kicks in multiple strikes on the same kick. I know you said no weights, but one thing that works very well is 10lb ankle weights in conjunction with slow—slow, slow—kicks, where you can stop at any point in the arc of the kick and still be in complete, comfortable balance. The first hard snap in this position has not just your thigh muscles but the full power of your hips behind it, so it's going to be more powerful than subsequent kicks on the same stance, but keep working on those second and third kicks and they'll get really strong too.

The balance leg should be a completely stable `pillar', whether or not you're training with ankle weights. If you do it right, you can reach the point where you feel you can perch on that stance leg and throw forty kicks in a row from the chambered/rechambered striking leg.

It's really important, when you do this (or any other excercise) to do at least as much practice on your `weak' leg as on your `strong leg'. Or more, ideally. And, as you've already been told, do not neglect bag work. It's the best way to develop power....

 

[Jesus_Sandals]

Work on some core strenght, Flexablity, and just hit the gym. There is nothing wrong with weight training. In my opinion you will not get slower with moderate weight training. Go to a gym and ask one of the trainers about leg training. There is alot more you can do than just squats. I happen to hate squats. >.<

 

[blackxpress]

What exile said. Practice them slow, slow, slow until your balance is perfect. You may be doing this already for all I know but nothing builds power into your kicks better IMO.

 

[King]

Ha-ha, Thunder Foot that post was amusing. I know you meant 500-1000 kicks per day in TOTAL. Reminds me of the time I actually attempted kicking the heavy bag 1000 times STRAIGHT. Took me 7 weeks of practice increasing 100 every week until I was able to do 1000 (500 each leg - alternating every 100). Roughly took 40'ish minutes to complete a non-stop set. Only did it that one time and wrote it off as too much kicking for my own damn good. lol

Anyway Chris, advice wise the only thing not mentioned was a mental aspect of kicking. Most people get so bent up concentrating for power that they get so tense. When you are tense your muscles aren't as flexible and they actually slow down your kick; giving you the opposite results. Sure it's still a hard kick but it could be better. So my advice would be to work on relaxing while you kick. Focus on a target, commit to the kick and let it go... Bleh, it's hard to write down something that you figure out with experience. Just do what I did, learn how to kick the bag 1000 times non-stop. It should dawn on you as it did to me with practice. lol