Speed up kicks for karate tournaments!!!

[pcam16]

Hi does anyone know of any ways i can speed up my kicks? I do karate so the two kicks i wanna get even quicker are Roundhouse and Hook kick! I can already kick very well but i wanna get my kicks quicker so its easier for tounaments! Does anyone know how?

[boxeador]

I'm in the same situation as you. Today I bought some 5 pound ankle weight's and im going to kick with those on, you can also use wrist weights for your punches, use slow kicks only 1/4 speed(a word of caution some people say this will hurt you knees, it will certainlly hurt your knees if you do it at full speed. Another thing you can do is practice your kicking in a pool.

[nathanjusko]

That is a great idea about the kicks in the pool, that'll wear your ass out.

 

My suggestion is to train for at least 5 weeks in advance of the tournie, with a good strength training/cardio program that involves anaerobic sprinting for however long the rounds are going to be with a one minute walk in between them. Strength train with your legs at least twice in one week (gonna suck for first week but deal with it). Also, I know this is gonna sound bad, but use supplements, Supplement with whey protein and creatine in your diet. My body felt thick when i was on creatine and i worried about too much weight, but don't worry about it, when I got into sparring (tkd) my kicks were 50% faster than before (even the guy had to stop and comment me on how much faster they were than just the week before, lol). Use slow kicks with ankle weights on the days leading up to the fight and on the day of the tournament use an eca stack and before your round, when you're "on-deck", do 5 quarter speed kicks with the weights on. YOur opponent will be a lil confused and your kicks will be so incredibly fast since your legs were used to kicks with weights on, your muscles will overcompensate on speed for aproximately 30 minutes after your slow weighted kicks so it should last you until your final rounds are up. Hope this helps and be sure to kick ass.

[100-Artiste]

When it comes to getting speed i think it comes down to one thing, practice. (lol)

 

Basically, make sure you have 'perfect' technique first, if you have pretty good technique and your competition is coming up then move onto practice faster.

 

Basically, just kick over and over again trying to make each kick faster than the one before but also keeping technique as 'perfect' as possible.

 

For technique you can kick the air.

 

For speed i reccomend air, bag or makiwara, i know you didnt mention side kick here but you should not over practice this kick against air because it becomes damaging to the joint.

 

When i say bag and makiwara above i don't really know whether you need power in comeptitions because i do Kyukushin mainly and we always focus on speed causing power when we practice.

 

When i say practice i really mean practice. It gets really boring but if you do literally thousands of kicks, without a break, one after the other, non stop, making sure your technique stays 'perfect' then you will get fast, very fast.

 

Remember in the kick that pulling the leg down quickly is also important - makes the kick look a hell load cooler as well.

 

A lot of its psychological anyway, if you want to kick faster, "kick faster" ^_^

 

I think you could experiment with adding weights to your legs and kicking in water could be good too. But all of these can only be supplements to proper practice of the technique - because after all, by doing something as well as you can, over and over again, you WILL get better.

 

That means spead, power, accuracy, confidence, spirit (etc..)

 

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[hobz]

According to my sensei slow kicks help speed up your kicks, you develop stronger legs etc. What he has us do is grab a partner and put right hand up and right side forward, then we lift our right leg, hold it in chamber, then kick out fast, and hold it there for 4 seconds, then bring it back to chamber and hold it there, then our partner goes. Then we do 2, etc. Till we are at 8, and at 8 we hold there for about 1 minute. Switch rights and lefts for other side.