The Low Kick
March 26, 2008 by Bob Patterson
For the month of April I thought I’d feature some of my favorite low kicks. Besides this post these videos will be live in my sidebar video stream for the month of April.
In taekwondo we rarely cover low kicks. Most of what we do is mid-section or higher. So, while this post is mostly for the taekwondo folks, it’s also for those of you who are in a style that does not emphasize low kicks.
Karate and taekwondo generally emphasizes four ways to defend against a kick: Get inside the kick radius and jam it, block it (usually inside block or low block), evade it altogether, or capture it. One other way that I was taught in PPCT and in Wing Chun is to simply raise your knee. Here’s an example from Wing Chun. You’ll also see a variation of this defense in the Muay Thai videos to follow. The only catch with the knee raise is to still protect your ribs with your arms and watch for head shots.
The first low kick I’ll cover is the round kick. In taekwondo or karate we are taught to strike with the ball of the foot or the flat of the foot (i.e. top part with toes extended). A really easy variation that you can practice on a heavy bag or with a partner and shield is the Muay Thai version. From a taekwondo perspective the mechanics are exactly the same (e.g., hip rotation, heel pointing at target, etc), the only differences are 1) You land it from rib height down to knee level and 2) The striking surface is your shin bone. Targets include the ribs, outer thigh, and knee joint. I’ve been told that this kick is comparable to being hit with a solid oak stick.
If you have a bag or kicking shield and a partner it’s a good exercise to practice. I found that after three years of using your foot as the striking surface it takes a while to adjust to using your shin bone as the striking surface. (your targeting is off)
Now one low kick that we do occasionally practice in taekwondo is the low round to the inside of the thigh. Here’s an example from Muay Thai (FF to 56 seconds). This kick targets a nerve cluster and it uses the foot as your striking surface (ball with toes pulled back or ridge with toes extended). As is the case with any kick be sure to retract the leg immediately so your opponent cannot catch the leg.
The next kick is what my first taekwondo school called a cut kick. This happens to be one of my favorite go-to kicks because it works well with long legs. The video shows sparring applications with the target generaly being the middle to low part of your chest protector. However, in a self defense setting if you wait for someone to move on you first, you can target their hip joint. When you do this you add your momentum to their forward momentum and if you hit that joint you literally “cut” them in half. That is, you interrupt their attack causing them to bend over which also exposes their head and opens it to head shots.
A Jeet Kune Do (or Wing Chun) variation is a low step-in side kick (taekwondo would call it a shuffle or skipping side). While you could take a knee out *if* you hit I personally think the more realistic application of this kick is to close distance and to distract. If you aim for the shin it becomes a nice gap-bridger which gets you in close and may cause them to drop their hands. Once that’s done their head is open to hand techniques. This one is really easy to practice on a heavy bag that has a base. Alternately you can have a partner place a kicking shield at their shins and work it with two people.
The last video I’ll feature comes from taekwondo’s sister, hapkido. This video takes many of taekwondo’s kicks and puts them down low. What I like about this video is that if you are familiar with taekwondo’s basic and intermediate kicks you could easily bring them down low after reviewing this video–even better if you have a heavy bag or partner to practice with!
In order of demonstration:
- The push kick
- Inside side kick
- Outside crescent (probably used as a sweep or trip)
- Low round (flat of foot)
- Axe kick (again probably a sweep or trip)
- Low side kick
- Inside crescent (sweep or trip)
- Stomp kick (probably to top of foot)
- Spinning hook (used as a low sweep–this one we practice)
- What looks like another low round
That wraps my featured videos for the month of April so enjoy!
~BCP
Wing Chun does have a side kick, but IMO using it to close (i.e. turning away as a matter of preference) is not a Wing Chun application.
Hi Chris -
Here’s a video of someone using the WC side kick to bridge the gap. (he’s also doing a combo kick)
This was very similar to what I was taught for the short time I was in it. I can’t speak to tradition here because we deviated from it. Perhaps that Serbian video is doing the same?
~BCP
Oh, OK. I’d thought you were referring to the use of the side kick at first, rather than in response to a sidestep of the initial attack.
I was and I probably wasn’t very clear.
A problem with having dabbled in other arts is that it all starts to blend together and sometimes I forget where I learned what.