High kicks in karate

[Montana]

I hear the same thing over the last 20 years. But every time I finish watching a Kyokushin tournament, I do question the conventional wisdom that high kicks don't work.

Since I'm not familiar with the rules of that tournament, let me ask you.

1. Do they allow full power groin techniques?

2. Do they allow full power kicks to the knee?

3. Do they allow sweeps to the supporting leg?

Basically, are there rules? If so, then they negate the premise that the martial arts are based upon. That being no rules for selfdefense purposes.

Anytime you train in a class, you automatically place a ruleset on yourself. Competition is no different. As far as the above:

(1) In sparring, no, but can you name any martial art that spars with full power to the groin on a regular basis?

(2) Again, name one martial art that spars with full power to the knee on a regular basis. Although, since they do allow low kicks to the thigh (gedan mawashi geri), it's just a matter of target selection by that point. The same applies to attacking the groin area: it's target selection, not the technique itself.

(3) Actually, yes they do. Ashi barai (leg sweep) is a popular technique among some of the more technical fighters.

Ahhh..now I see the problem. You're talking from the perspective of a nice, friendly dojo or tournament sparring scenerio. Whereas I'm talking from the perspective of defending yourself on the street. There are a lot of major differences there.

[Kuma]

Ahhh..now I see the problem. You're talking from the perspective of a nice, friendly dojo or tournament sparring scenerio. Whereas I'm talking from the perspective of defending yourself on the street. There are a lot of major differences there.

Training from a street perspective still does not allow you to ignore those rules in training either. Using those targets, then you can only go through the motions. The beauty about sparring for self defense is then it simply boils down to target selection. A low kick to the outer thigh can now easily become a low kick to the outside of the knee. The push kick to the midsection can now become a front kick to the groin. Your jab to the nose can become a finger jab to the eyes. The attributes are all there, it's just adapting to the situation.

In the reverse, if you only train techniques that are "too deadly" for the dojo you now have in essence actually limited yourself. Now you cannot respond to a situation that might involve a lesser use of force than what you have trained for. Also, once you realize that it's actually quite difficult to hit a person in some of the large targets while fighting, you realize some of the smaller targets that are often espoused as fight enders in self defense (in actuality, quite not as often as we are led to believe) are even harder to strike.

All training boils down to the fact that we need to recognize the limitations of what we are training for. Whether you train in a "combat sport" or a "street fight only" martial art, both have already restricted what you can actually train simply by the nature that you, along with your other fellow students, are a willing participant and thus will not be maiming or killing each other that day.

[brickshooter]

I hear the same thing over the last 20 years. But every time I finish watching a Kyokushin tournament, I do question the conventional wisdom that high kicks don't work.

Its not so much a question of 'dont work' or even 'cant work'. We can always find examples of where they have worked for people in self-defence.

The question is, are they the safest, most reliable thing you can do under the circumstances?

Imagine the Kyokushinkai fighter being shoved from behind by his opponent's mate just as he's throwing a kick. How much more disruptive to his balance would it be if he's throwing a high kick at the time rather than a low kick?

Imagine that, instead of fighting on a clean flat mat, he's in a bar in which the floor is wet in patches with spilt beer and occasional bits of broken glass?

Imagine that the penalty for going down on your posterior is not that the fight is momentarily stopped by the ref, or even that the opponent wins the match, but that the assailant and his mates close in and kick you unconscious or worse.

And so on and so on. The gist of it is that the requirements of self-defence are very different from those of the sporting arena. The two scenarios require very different tactics.

Mike

True. Your safety-reward model does explain it well.

But at the same time, it does leave room for person to take more risk should the situtation require more risk.

[bushido_man96]

Ahhh..now I see the problem. You're talking from the perspective of a nice, friendly dojo or tournament sparring scenerio. Whereas I'm talking from the perspective of defending yourself on the street. There are a lot of major differences there.

Training from a street perspective still does not allow you to ignore those rules in training either. Using those targets, then you can only go through the motions. The beauty about sparring for self defense is then it simply boils down to target selection. A low kick to the outer thigh can now easily become a low kick to the outside of the knee. The push kick to the midsection can now become a front kick to the groin. Your jab to the nose can become a finger jab to the eyes. The attributes are all there, it's just adapting to the situation.

In the reverse, if you only train techniques that are "too deadly" for the dojo you now have in essence actually limited yourself. Now you cannot respond to a situation that might involve a lesser use of force than what you have trained for. Also, once you realize that it's actually quite difficult to hit a person in some of the large targets while fighting, you realize some of the smaller targets that are often espoused as fight enders in self defense (in actuality, quite not as often as we are led to believe) are even harder to strike.

All training boils down to the fact that we need to recognize the limitations of what we are training for. Whether you train in a "combat sport" or a "street fight only" martial art, both have already restricted what you can actually train simply by the nature that you, along with your other fellow students, are a willing participant and thus will not be maiming or killing each other that day.

I think Kuma makes a valid point here. Its hard to train "hard" to all the target areas in an "alive" sparring arrangement, and retain training partners. At the same time, I think its important to drop the sparring rules from time to time, and visit training methods that do allow the groin shots, kicks to the knee, etc, to be trained, as well.

[bushido_man96]

I hear the same thing over the last 20 years. But every time I finish watching a Kyokushin tournament, I do question the conventional wisdom that high kicks don't work.

Agreed. High kicks can work, and can work well. They are not always what we might consider a "high percentage" technique.

Since I'm not familiar with the rules of that tournament, let me ask you.

1. Do they allow full power groin techniques?

2. Do they allow full power kicks to the knee?

3. Do they allow sweeps to the supporting leg?

As per my style:

1. No.

2. No. All techniques must be above the belt in competition.

3. No.

However, we do practice some of these things in our one-steps. The competitive side of things has a different focus on a different skill set, thus more kicking, and high kicking.

Basically, are there rules? If so, then they negate the premise that the martial arts are based upon. That being no rules for selfdefense purposes.

As mentioned earlier, its tough to do sparring at a reasonable pace without some kind of rules in place. I do agree that some rule sets out there don't apply as well to self-defense, but training can be tailored to suit.

Its not so much a question of 'dont work' or even 'cant work'. We can always find examples of where they have worked for people in self-defence.

The question is, are they the safest, most reliable thing you can do under the circumstances?

This can be hard to pin down, as well. What is the safest, most reliable thing one can do under the circumstances of self-defense? Run? Sure, unless you're slow like me. Punches? Some guys can take them; some can't. Joint locks? Can be tough on resisting opponents. Grappling? Great, unless a crowd of baddies show up. How about a gun? Great, unless someone already has a gun on you.

I do agree that there are some strategies that are likely to have a higher success rate, and that kicks above the belt are not always "high percentage" moves. But, its good to have the tool in your box if you need it.

[Montana]

I hear the same thing over the last 20 years. But every time I finish watching a Kyokushin tournament, I do question the conventional wisdom that high kicks don't work.

Its not so much a question of 'dont work' or even 'cant work'. We can always find examples of where they have worked for people in self-defence.

The question is, are they the safest, most reliable thing you can do under the circumstances?

Imagine the Kyokushinkai fighter being shoved from behind by his opponent's mate just as he's throwing a kick. How much more disruptive to his balance would it be if he's throwing a high kick at the time rather than a low kick?

Imagine that, instead of fighting on a clean flat mat, he's in a bar in which the floor is wet in patches with spilt beer and occasional bits of broken glass?

Imagine that the penalty for going down on your posterior is not that the fight is momentarily stopped by the ref, or even that the opponent wins the match, but that the assailant and his mates close in and kick you unconscious or worse.

And so on and so on. The gist of it is that the requirements of self-defence are very different from those of the sporting arena. The two scenarios require very different tactics.

Mike

Exactly! Good post.

[Kuma]

This can be hard to pin down, as well. What is the safest, most reliable thing one can do under the circumstances of self-defense? Run? Sure, unless you're slow like me. Punches? Some guys can take them; some can't. Joint locks? Can be tough on resisting opponents. Grappling? Great, unless a crowd of baddies show up. How about a gun? Great, unless someone already has a gun on you.

I do agree that there are some strategies that are likely to have a higher success rate, and that kicks above the belt are not always "high percentage" moves. But, its good to have the tool in your box if you need it.

And that's what self protection is all about. Not every single thing can fit neatly into every box. What works surprisingly well in one situation may be an utter failure the next, and what doesn't work well one time may be incredibly successful the next.

Some techniques may be lower percentage than others, but if you train them constantly to use in a real fight then you will have a much higher chance of pulling it off than Joe Kyu from Smith's Karate down the street. Sure it may not be the safest approach, but I've met some very fast and powerful kickers who could pull it off. Some have even had that mutant flexibility where they could kick you upside the head while you're practically standing on their foot. I've always been a low kicker myself (chudan is pretty much the main level for me) so I'm obviously biased towards low kicks, but if you have the skill, flexibility, speed, and power you could pull off a high kick in a real fight far better than I could.

[isshinryu5toforever]

Ok, there are a few things that I want to cover in my post that are from a older posts, and go back to the first question postulated by the OP so please humor me a little haha:

Empty handed martial arts are a pretty new thing. Most of the time on a battle field, if you had no weapon, you were a dead man. I don't care how good you are at any empty handed martial art, if the other guy is half as good with a sword, you're dead.

That said, not all empty handed martial arts developed out of a need for self defense. Boxing, for example, was technically a game. A really, really brutal one (check out the metal spiked Ancient Greek Boxing gloves at some museums), but a game none-the-less. Same goes for Taekkyon. I can bring in the idea of high kicks here.

Taekkyon was a Korean village "game" where you got points for landing various kicks on your opponent. Knocking someone down by kicking the topknot was a victory. It was a "game" the same way boxing is a "game." It wasn't all out warfare, but it wasn't to be taken lightly, and you could definitely get hurt. Korean village sports were pretty brutal, they had another where you basically hurled rocks at each other. That's for another post though.

I have seen a few theories postulated that high kicking, especially with the hip movements involved in things like crescent kicks, may have come from Taekkyon. Maybe the kicks themselves didn't originate there, because Taekkyon's kicks were more hard pushes than snaps, but maybe the idea of kicking to the head did.

This would especially make sense in terms of Japanese MAs as they finally moved to Korea during the occupation period from 1905-1945. Japanese Karate was something practiced for discipline and aesthetic beauty. Some of those high kicks sure are beautiful.

Some people would point to the ban on Korean martial arts, but that was only really active in Seoul. How do you really police a population that lives mostly in and near the mountains?

[Kuma]

It depends on what you mean by "always a part of karate". I know that mageri was always in karate while mawashi-geri is only 100 years old. It is hard to find out today if high kicks were always in karate. This martial arts have existed in around 500 years now.

Maybe not in Shuri-te styles, but in Naha-te styles that may not be the case. We were actually just talking about this on another forum, but basically Naha-te karate styles were influenced a lot by Fujian White Crane, which does have roundhouse kicks in its system (though I don't know what it's called or where admittedly). Since the Naha-te styles tend to be more circular, it would make sense that mawashi geri was around a lot longer than before.

[bushido_man96]

Its not so much a question of 'dont work' or even 'cant work'. We can always find examples of where they have worked for people in self-defence.

Like you say here, we can find examples of where certain things have worked. We can also find examples of where certain things don't work, as well, like you state below:

Imagine the Kyokushinkai fighter being shoved from behind by his opponent's mate just as he's throwing a kick. How much more disruptive to his balance would it be if he's throwing a high kick at the time rather than a low kick?

Imagine that, instead of fighting on a clean flat mat, he's in a bar in which the floor is wet in patches with spilt beer and occasional bits of broken glass?

Imagine that the penalty for going down on your posterior is not that the fight is momentarily stopped by the ref, or even that the opponent wins the match, but that the assailant and his mates close in and kick you unconscious or worse.

And so on and so on. The gist of it is that the requirements of self-defence are very different from those of the sporting arena. The two scenarios require very different tactics.

Mike

You can play this "what if" game all day long, with many different tactics. No tactic is full proof. The "group attack" scenario is a constant arguement to the efficacy of ground fighting in self-defense, regardless of how effective it has been proven to be. Small joint manipulation gets the same treatment.

The fact of the matter is that for every scenario someone can put up on how something is effective, another scenario can be put up of how it isn't effective. That doesn't mean you should throw it out as not being beneficial or ineffective. The more tools in your toolbox, the better.