Instep kicks

[Tony Dismukes]

It's been my experience when I see people break their shin bones it's because of improper training and execution.
The shin bone is more oval than round. So if you don't fully commit and execute the kick properly and hit with a slight angle and the impact is to the inside of the leg there is a greater chance of breakage. Think a ruler or a flat piece of wood. If you hit with the edge it's a lot sturdy. Hit with the flat side it's going to flex and break.
As far as instep we (thus I) do tsumasaki geri or toe kicks. They are effective towards flesh and sensitive areas. Allows for penetration into small openings within the opponents guard. Since I stopped with instep and ball I've had less injuries to my foot. Counter intuitive, I know. Also that option/concept is easily transferable to the street since a good boot, shoe, or sneaker won't allow me to pull my toes back anyway and the tips are very sturdy and effective as well.

I never got comfortable kicking with the toes or ball of the foot while doing a roundhouse kick barefoot. I imagine there's some body conditioning necessary. With shoes on though, I'm a big fan of kickng with the toes.

 

[TonyU]

I never got comfortable kicking with the toes or ball of the foot while doing a roundhouse kick barefoot. I imagine there's some body conditioning necessary. With shoes on though, I'm a big fan of kickng with the toes.

Yes, it takes conditioning, but with patience and done correctly it isn't that hard. But then again I have a small sand bag next to my bed I kick on a regular basis.

 

[Andrew Green]

I never got comfortable kicking with the toes or ball of the foot while doing a roundhouse kick barefoot. I imagine there's some body conditioning necessary. With shoes on though, I'm a big fan of kickng with the toes.

It takes a fair bit of training, toes have to be very flexible to do so and it's a different type of kick then a shin kick. It's also a lot more limited in use then a shin kick, sort of like a lot of more "traditional" kicks you don't see much of in full contact fighting. They can work, but take a lot of practice and aren't really part of your "core" set of techniques.

But for the most part that's best use as a technique if you train in shoes (ex. Savate)

 

[drop bear]

I know that is arguable, but the forces put on the shin bone can are such that because of the weight of the lower shin and foot, breaking is a danger.

But I honestly don't know how many times more a shin would be broken vs the instep. I was uncomfortable with an instep kick when I stared Hapkido. But I got used to it. Even so there were times when I defaulted to a kick with the ball of the foot. Latent memory?

Were your kicks getting checked in these instep,ball of foot battles?

 

[MaMaD]

Off topic perhaps, but can you expand on that a bit? MMA has takedowns, and I can't think of many fighters that kick with their instep instead of shins.

To me kicking with insteps just seems like a bad idea and injured feet.

well, in sanda, with body and head protection type, mostly we try to get points. if we kick with shin, our leg gonna get catch. sanda trainers practice this a lot. so, the power that shin kick provide, isn't useful for us. but there is some situation that we use shin kick. like when u catch ur opponent leg then u want kick other leg to take ur opponent down.