For the majority of
Olympic sparring competitors, the roundhouse kicks, and its many
variations, are the bread and butter of their sparring game. So what
if I told you I knew some great drills for increase the speed and
power of your roundhouse?
I have three simple
drills using one simple tool; the elastic.
Any sturdy, long
piece of elastic with loops for your ankle that can take rapid and
repeated stretching (we use bicycle inner tubes tied together, you
can buy resistance bands of different strengths,) attached to a solid
unmoving anchor (we put our elastic around a door's floor bolt.)
Ideally you'll use
the same elastic for each time you do a drill, making comparing your
performance each time simple.
The above video is of
me demonstrating the three drills:
It comes with
some great free commentary by one of our resident eight year olds.
“Why do you use
the rubber?”
“To make it
harder”
Well put.
Contrast Kicks
The idea is pretty
simple; kick the bag pretty much as hard as you can, making sure you
have good technique and speed. Take your time with these kicks, no
need to rush, do this for about 5-10 kicks.
Then put the
elastic around the ankle of the foot you want to kick with. To begin
with you'll want to start with the elastic just tense with your foot
back (this will stop it suddenly pulling). Record this distance from
your anchoring point (we can improve this later). Again, kick as hard
and fast as you can, taking your time to get good technique. Once
kicking with this much resistance is easy, take a few steps past taut
and kick with increased resistance. Do this for the number of reps
you want.
Take off the
elastic and finish off with another 5-10 unrestrained kicks, using
the same technique you used while using the elastic. The power of
this set should be more than the power of your initial warm up set.
So how does this work?
I've had students
who were big solid men, who would kick your kidneys out with every
roundhouse. The problem? They did this huge wind-up that made them
slow and easily predictable; they fell in the stereotype of the slow
lumbering big guy. This drill causes the wind up technique to become
tiring and inefficient in generating power. So what I was finding
with these guys was, with very little coaxing, their technique
improved a lot, and most of their drive was coming forward, making
their kicks much faster.
Similarly with a
lot of kids and even women, I found often the problem was they
couldn't put any power into their kicks, whatever their hold-back,
whether it be fear of injuring themselves, unaccustomed to the idea
of hitting others, or any other reason. This drill helped a lot of
them generate that raw power when hitting a target, because they had
to just to reach the target; so when the contrast of no resistance
came, they finally smacked the target and made a solid hit.
I often like to use
this drill in sets of 50 each side, because lets face it, you could
end up kicking that many times in a round and you want to be able to
keep on generating power with speed the whole way through the round.
Over-Speed
Kicking
Much like parachute training used for sprinting, adding extra
resistance to an already fast and explosive action, we are going to
add resistance to our fast roundhouse in the form of the elastic.
Now there are a few ways to approach this, firstly you can just bang
out a set of kicks as quickly as you can, this will promote the time
from kicking to recovery back to kicking again, quite well; which is
a useful skill to promote. Students doing this seem to make great
improvement on their recovery as well, as the elastic pulls you back
making it difficult to plant properly, meaning an increased
concentration on their form.
Another option is to work on single leg doubles and triples, briefly
tapping the foot on the ground between kicks up to the number you are
aiming for and then back to recovery. When doing this the importance
is on the speed between kicks and the power of kicks, not the speed
of the overall set. So take your time after recovery. This works well
on improving the power of secondary kicks after the initial kick, as
well kicking off the clinch. In the video, I do a quick set of a
single, double, triple, a four and a five.
With either of these make sure to do a set without the elastic to
contrast the kick.
Resistance
Peaking
This time we are
going to play around with our resistance a bit. We are going to start
with the elastic on the foot, but with no tension at the point of
kick contact (i.e keep it really loose). We're going to warm up with
a few kicks to the bag or shield (I prefer the body shield for this
drill as we're practicing scoring.) making sure to kick at a power
that scores. Once you've got a feel for the power you want to kick at
we'll start the set.
Again starting with
no tension in the elastic, kick once at scoring power, then move
forward, adding resistance to the elastic and kick again, maintaining
that power. Keep moving forward and kicking once at that resistance
until you can no longer deliver a kick that scores.
In the video, I
show two variations you can play with, in the first one, I drop step
forward after the kick, meaning I can get a lot more kicks in the
same distance and the resistance doesn't jump as rapidly. In the
second, I take a full step between each kick, resulting a in a slower
drill with less kicks and a higher jump in resistance between kicks.
This drill utilises
the climbing resistance to help athletes push through a plateau in
power, think of it as a bit of a range finder for working sets, with
the end of the range being a speed working range, and a bit before
the end being a power working range.
Conclusion
Part technique practice, part power resistance training, this drill
should be treated like any other conditioning drill, with a focus on
planning and progressive overload; record your results, and then
improve on them.
Elastics have proven themselves with student's I have trained as a
great power, speed and technique exercise, as long as you're smart
about programming them. Keep in mind that elastic use should be
assistance only, and kicking without resistance should make up the
bulk of your work. This is because elastic training isn't a natural
movement, because let's face it, when in a round have you had someone
holding back your leg from kicking?
Try these out and let me know how they go for you.
Alex is a Kukkiowon certified 4th
dan and has been training in martial arts for 12 years and
instructing for 7. He is also a certified Personal Trainer and
constantly works to blend his passion for physiology and fitness into
his martial arts instruction; and his passion for martial arts into
his fitness instruction.
For more info, check out his
Melbourne, Australia based club and business.
Tigers Taekwondo –
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