Locking The Hips

[sensei8]

In Karate there is almost no time when you use only the muscles of your upper body. The hips always form the base. The moment one kicks, punches, and blocks your hips will naturally move.

You don't move the hips on purpose; you must move your hips naturally. You exhale strongly but not entirely when striking, punching, kicking, and the like. Exhale 70% to 80% of your breath and leave 20% to 30. This is in order to deal with the next consecutive attack.

Here are some of the drills that I put my students through to get them to understand their tangible hips...

For nearly all kicks, I start out with slow dynamic kicks. This is a good stretch as well as a way for the student to see the proper line of motion - in slow motion. And for many kicks, I have them move the hips without the kick. This forces them to focus on the hip and not the kick.

For kicking, one drill is to have them kick as of they didn't have any leg below the knee - so they just point with the knee. I keep extra long belts for those folks who need more visuals; for them, I'll replace their short belt with a longer one and then they can watch how the belt moves. If the belt doesn't move, it means their hips didn't move.

So I would my run my students through a few dynamic kicks, watching for the whipping belt.

I also run my students through a few dynamic kicks at slow motion. Once they get the idea of the moving hip, then they can add the slow throw of the instep. I prefer teaching the instep method of the kick because it produces better formation of the leg and knee, and it helps them extend their kicks. With ball-of-toe, new kickers tend to hold back a little.

Side kicks: the easiest way is to have them do kicks along a smooth wall. This will aide ones posture. I'll use a focus pad or a blocker to encourage their head from bowing down too much.

I'll attach a bag of tennis balls that will hang over the hip toward the back; the idea was to try to fling the bag with the hip; this was to build the crescent kick. I don't do this because it's very time consuming, and I have a lot of students, which means I have to have a lot of bags/balls. So instead, I have them imagine the technique, which seems to work fine.

As to punching drills, I explain that with the reverse punch, they have to lift their heel a little. When they do this, the resistance pulling the hips back is released, allowing the student to more easily punch. I do not do this drill with a forward punch.

For the knife hand block, it's hard; I tell the student to imagine their knife-blade going in one direction, and their forward hip twisting backward in the opposite direction. I don't dwell on this because it's not used much.

Another drill I do is similar as described, but this is walking up and down a line. The student steps forward, then lifts the knee pointing to the target as the standing foot pivots backwards; the kicking knee drops to the floor and the other foot becomes the kicking knee, etc. I engage the students to focus on lifting the knee to point at the target, then to focus on the pivot foot. With a 180 degree pivot, the hip can do nothing but turn.

Try these drills to better understand the concepts and principles of the hips.

[Kuma]

A favorite drill of mine is practicing your uke waza and te waza from a side fav and locking into the technique from a forward stance. Using a right reverse punch as an example, as the punch left my chamber the hips would follow. Then, at the last second, I would turn my feet into a left forward stance while locking my rear (right) leg. Difficult to explain via text so I hope that makes sense.

[sensei8]

A favorite drill of mine is practicing your uke waza and te waza from a side fav and locking into the technique from a forward stance. Using a right reverse punch as an example, as the punch left my chamber the hips would follow. Then, at the last second, I would turn my feet into a left forward stance while locking my rear (right) leg. Difficult to explain via text so I hope that makes sense.

I like this drill because it isolates the hips in a positive and tangible way.

I also find use in posture enforcement drills as well so that the hips are isolated. Transition from one stance to another while moving from point A to point B and while maintaining correct posture.

Thank you Kuma.

[JusticeZero]

As one of the physical training exercises, having people move parts of the body in isolation - dancerish pelvis rotation and swaying, then with the abdomen, then the chest seperate from the shoulders.

Just teaching people that there are a variety of moving parts between their hip joints and their shoulders, and making them practice with purposely moving those parts, is important and has good results.

[Kuma]

Thank you sensei8. That was the drill that really seemed to make it "click" within me hence why I'm partial to it. I like working my ido geiko and kata with it occasionally as well.

[shadowspawn]

I noticed that about the way a lot of other schools do their knife hand block. Our style practices this same block with the hips moving in the opposite direction of the hands, but I personally teach a second version of the block where both hands come backwards and come down moving in the same direction of the hips. The same thing with the downward block. Two versions. One with a pulling hand covering the gap created when executing the block (which is a block in itself) and one where the hand comes up above the head, the hips turn out, the arm sweeps, and the hips follow through ending up facing the opposite side and recoil back to center. Inside out block (from center to outside) is the same. Twist the hips (and raise the elbow to practice an elbow block as well) and then snap back with the block itself. You could potentially break someone's arm with this if their arm happens to catch on your torso.