Side Kick: Kicking leg training. Not for the height, but for injury prevention.

One of the questions that I often get is:

"Paul, you're saying that the kicking leg is not very important for the height of a sidekick, or for the height of a roundhouse kick or hook kick for that matter. Then why do you have a complete program focusing on the kicking leg?"

While it is true that the height of all three sideline kicks, the side kick, the hook and the roundhouse kick depends on the supporting leg. When it comes to the kicking leg, as many of the people that have been watching ElasticSteel videos and reading ElasticSteel articles, understand that it abducts to about 45 degrees. Any more than that and you need the flexibility of the supporting leg. And that is exactly the point.

Having the strength in the abductors of the kicking leg is how you prevent injury of the hip. I cannot tell you how many people over the last approximately 20 years have written to me, having practiced all kinds of martial arts styles and have hip injuries.

Many people cannot even kick anymore, at least on one side, sometimes on both sides, and some people have resorted to surgeries. Because of a very, very
specific thing. The weakness of the abductors of the kicking leg.

Now, the muscles that are your abductors (the ones that pull your leg up and out to the side) are very important here. If your abductors are weak, they cannot control the leg. If your abductors are strong, you can raise the leg with control to the point where you are not jamming your joint. That's a very specific type of strength. It's a short range strength.

Short range strength is not natural strength that people have. It has to be developed. Let me explain it this way. If you cannot bring your leg up with control into a sidekick position, you will throw your leg up. In other words, you will use the strength where you have it, to compensate for the lack of strength where you don't.

And this lack of strength is in short range. So you will contract the muscle in normal range so that it would get somehow into the short range. Well, this is how you injure your hip.

This is how the mechanism of injuring someone's hip looks like when you throw sideline kicks: side kick, roundhouse kick and hook kick. With side kick being the most prone to that injury. But you can absolutely do the same with the roundhouse kick and a hook kick.

If you have weak abductors, its just going to take longer for you to get that injury with the roundhouse kick and a hook kick, then with the side kick. But it's still going to happen, unfortunately. So developing the kicking leg is the protection.

Don't confuse the protection with an ability to kick higher. Having strong muscles in your kicking leg in short ranges of your abduction will prevent an injury. It's not going to allow you to kick higher. If you want to kick higher, you have to develop the supporting leg. And that's why we have a separate program for the supporting leg.

There could be two people. Both of them cannot kick high. Both of them don't have developed supporting leg, but one has developed kicking leg. And that person has control and they're not jamming their joint every time they thrown a kick. And another person has no control and they're jamming their joint. Because again, all they're doing is accelerating their leg up without any control in the ranges where they have strengths. So that they can compensate for the ranges where they lack strength in the hip muscles.

Beautiful, effective, strong and very importantly, safe, Sidekick is not just about the height of the kick. If it was just about the height of the kick and nothing else, we would focus just on the supporting leg. And you know, in the ElasticSteel Kick Mastery System we have a program for the torso. You can read about it here for
the kicking leg and for the supporting leg.

So, if all you want to do is reach very high with your kick, you don't need the flexibility of your kicking leg or your torso, just the supporting leg. Actually, there are a lot of kickers with their body dropping to the floor. All they are doing is they develop good flexibility in their supporting leg. They don't have control of the kicking leg, but their kick is high, and I don't think that's what most people want.

That's definitely not what I wanted not when I was a kid and not now. Sure, I was happy to be able to kick somebody in the head. But as I began to understand more and more, I realized that it's more than just, somehow my foot reaching somebody's head, and me feeling good that I'm able to do that.

Of course, developing the kicking leg has many other benefits. One is control. Being able to kick someone precisely where you want to kick them. Not a general area somewhere between the sternum and the belly button, but an exact area. Not somewhere on a head, but precisely the chin, the jaw, the temple with full control.

Sidekick is the most difficult kick to control. Front kick, Roundhouse kick and hook kick are easier. Sidekick is the most difficult one. So if you want to have a pinpoint accuracy in your sidekick, well, you need a very well developed kicking leg.

Kicking leg also helps a lot with the power of the kick. If your adductors are weak your leg will continue to fall down. As the kick makes contact with the target there is a tendency for the leg to basically use the target to prevent it from falling down, if the abductors are weak. And you could see that often when when people throw the kick into the target, into an opponent, a bag or a pad. In other words, there's a tendency for the leg to kind of fall off before it gets pulled into the chamber, as opposed to shooting (if we're talking about sidekick) out and back without having that fall off.

Now, from the sparring point of view, if you're throwing a jab or cross or a straight punch, whichever you call it. If the arm falls down before you pull it back, of course, that exposes you.

It doesn't happen quite with the sidekick. Although if you rely on your chamber for protection, sometimes if you use a high chamber, you don't want that fall off to happen after the kick.

But, in most cases, it's not your protection that's a problem. It's just that if you have weak abductors you lose the power. Because the line of force of the kick changes, it's linear, and then it's no longer linear once the contact is made with the target.

It may still look linear because a person has his foot in the target and its not falling because the target is holding it up. But, the force is lost because the abductors on the supporting leg are weak. These muscles are not the main power muscles behind the kick, but they keep the trajectory proper so that the force goes where it needs to go.

So this article gives you some ideas of the importance of the supporting leg training, especially in short ranges, and how it will improve your kick. If you're interested developing your supporting leg please click here for more info.