help with roundhouse kick

[hapkido princess]

I'm having some trouble with my roundhouse kick in Hapkido. It's SLOWLY getting better but I was hoping you guys could give me some tips. I'll start with my body type. TALL and THIN. I'm almost 6' and 133 lbs.Age 32. Flexibility is my one problem. I had my instructor watch my kicks. I seem to be over rotating my hip when I kick with the right leg. the left isn't too bad. I know it takes practice but I was hoping for some tips or training exercises..Thanks

Amy

[tufrthanu]

I tend to have the same problem. What I found helpful was to use a bar and find the proper body position by raising my leg straight up off the floor, this will allow you to find where your hips and feet should be for the side at that height.

[Jiffy]

The over twisting of the hip is usually a sypmtom of lack of sideways flexibility in the hip. Try to stretch this as much as possible, but you may find that it will only go so far. Side splits are the easiest way to work this.

The key point is not the height of the kick (considering that most of the time in the street it will go for the knee), but to ensure that the position of the delivery is correct.

As always, raise your concern with your instructor and ask if he can help you.

[bushido_man96]

I tend to have the same problem. What I found helpful was to use a bar and find the proper body position by raising my leg straight up off the floor, this will allow you to find where your hips and feet should be for the side at that height.

Along with this drill, add slow kicking to the exercise, to build strength in the kicking muscles.

[hapkido princess]

Thanks so much. I will add the exercises you all have suggested. My dear husband seems to think my hip just won't go any farther. I'd be happy with belt height (just for my test). Most fights I've seen (UFC and sparring) when a roundhouse is used it seems to only be to knee or thigh high. I'm not looking for my kick to be "pretty" just usefull. I fear that most kicks I use could be read pretty easily because of the lenght of my legs. I guess I just have to be fast .

[Ottman]

One thing I see with a lot of my students is improper position of the grounded foot. Specifically, they aren't rotating the foot that stays on the ground 180 degrees so that it is pointing directly away from the target. This usually means that they aren't rotating the hip enough, but in any case, I'll give you the same advice I give them:

Worry more about the position the rest of your body is in, and less about what your kicking foot and leg are doing. If the remainder of the body isn't positioned correctly, the motion and position of the kicking leg probably isn't correct either.

[Jiffy]

That's some fantastic advice. Get the body position right and the rest will come!

[Ottman]

Yeah, I find myself giving this advice quite often. In my experience (and I used to do this too, in fact I probably still do from time to time) students can get so focused on the end all result of a technique, that sometimes it seems that they forget they even have other parts of their body, which have to move in certain ways to allow the technique to be executed. I find that simply saying something like: "what's your grounded foot doing?" breaks that tunnel vision on what their kicking foot is doing, and all of a sudden they have a realization that they must kick with their whole body and not just one leg. It's worked out really well in my teaching. When I first started teaching, I used to try to get students to look at my technique and emulate it. I quickly found that this isn't very effective. Now I really break the technique down, and when I see a student get ultra focused on one part of a technique, I'll try to shift that focus to an area they haven't been paying much attention to, and again, the results from this strategy have been great.

[bushido_man96]

Yeah, I find myself giving this advice quite often. In my experience (and I used to do this too, in fact I probably still do from time to time) students can get so focused on the end all result of a technique, that sometimes it seems that they forget they even have other parts of their body, which have to move in certain ways to allow the technique to be executed. I find that simply saying something like: "what's your grounded foot doing?" breaks that tunnel vision on what their kicking foot is doing, and all of a sudden they have a realization that they must kick with their whole body and not just one leg. It's worked out really well in my teaching. When I first started teaching, I used to try to get students to look at my technique and emulate it. I quickly found that this isn't very effective. Now I really break the technique down, and when I see a student get ultra focused on one part of a technique, I'll try to shift that focus to an area they haven't been paying much attention to, and again, the results from this strategy have been great.

This is great teaching methodology. I think I just adopted it. Thanks for sharing!

[Ottman]

This is great teaching methodology. I think I just adopted it. Thanks for sharing!

no problem, I hope it serves you and your students well, and thanks for all the praise.