Using your hips to aid a kick

Here's a kick without using the hips - it would certainly hurt!
But with the hips, the kick has more reach and stopping power

One of the most neglected areas of hip work is during kicking. Your hips can greatly assist or strengthen your kicks.

You can generalise by saying that if you maximally use your hips whilst kicking, the kick has a thrusting (kekomi), or smashing action, which tends to extend the reach of the leg, and add your body weight to the kick, but often at the expense of posture. Such kicks are frequently highly committed, leaving you very exposed if they do not achieve their intended effect. If you do not use your hips, your leg action takes on more of a snapping or whipping action (keage) that is good for delivering a fast, painful kick without losing posture.

The simplest way to see the use of the hip is during a front kick. From parallel stance (heiko dachi), lift one leg up until the knee is at belt height, with the foot by your supporting knee. Up to this point, the kick could be either snapping or thrusting. Now, as you extend the foot towards the target, you can either leave the hips exactly where they are, which produces a snapping kick, or you can engage the hips.

To use the hips, rotate the kicking side hip forwards whilst rolling your hips upwards, (just like a sanchin dachi hip tuck). When you roll the hips upwards, you will have natural tendency to over-balance backwards, so to compensate, you automatically move your entire body from the pelvis and above, forwards, to rebalance yourself on your supporting leg. Turning the supporting foot out 45 degrees at the end of the kick provides a better foundation for this new body position. The funny thing is, this complex set of rotations feels as though you simply extended your hips forwards!

I recently got into a debate with a fourth dan who adamantly argued that performing a front kick with the front leg was a pointless exercise because the kick lacked stopping power against an advancing opponent. I argued that it didn’t need power if it was to the groin or the jaw – which is the entire essence of a snapping kick. However, it did get me thinking about the nature of front and back leg kicks.

At first, I assumed that the reason a front leg kick lacked power, was because your balance was too far forwards, meaning that the kick had to strike and return before you fell over. One solution to that is to shift your weight backwards before kicking, but then your body’s backwards momentum diminishes the kick's power...

The reason that a back leg kick has so much more stopping power is a factor of two things: your body’s forwards momentum, and the hip rotation that brings the leg forward. The combined effect of these two factors is a kick that has the full weight of your body behind it.

Interestingly, when you perform a side kick, the same principle does not necessarily apply. You can use front or back leg, or stand sideways on, and still deliver a strong thrusting kick that will stop an opponent in his tracks. One reason for this is the position of the supporting leg.

	Most people lack the strength and flexibility to lift a side kick higher than this without rotaing their hips
	But it's only by turning the supporting foot that the hips can be fully rotated for maximum reach and power. Notice that there is less spinal twisting.

When you perform a front kick, your centre of gravity, and your balance point, is ultimately your ankle and heel. Do a slow front kick against a wall and test it - even if you start with your weight over your toes, as your leg meets resistance, your weight is pushed backwards onto your heel, and if you continue thrusting you will either falll over or be forced to take a rebalancing hop backwards. It’s hard to get the balance for strong forwards leverage from your heel.

However, when you execute a side kick properly, the heel of the supporting foot turns towards the target. This not only helps with hip rotation, if the hips are used, but it also provides the optimum foot position for balance because the toes are now used to provide stability and leverage.

Many people try to perform side kicks whilst leaving the supporting foot facing at right angles to the target. This may be acceptable for snapping kicks, which do not need to deliver a lot of body power, but it significantly disadvantages you if delivering a thrusting kick.

When you try to put your hips into a side kick without allowing your heel to turn towards the target, you create imbalance, which threatens to topple you towards the target. When you contact the target, the imbalance works in the opposite direction, toppling you away from the target.

In actual fact, you’ll notice that when you turn your foot and put your hip into a side kick, your body actually turns as much as 45 degrees away from the target, with your back slightly towards them. I used to think that this meant improper application of the kick, but I now realise that this is an inevitable consequence of proper hip rotation.

There are some extremely flexible and balanced people who can keep their feet at right angles to the target, whilst raising and extending their legs to the side without falling over, but they sacrifice a significant amount of power by not transferring power from the ground upwards, via a rotated stance.

Look at that supporting foot. See, would I lie to you?!

Because back kicks move in the opposite direction to the way that your toes are facing, they share many of the same characteristics as a side kick, in that they have a stable foundatin from which to exert maximum leverage to the kick.

Some people argue that during a back kick, you should maintain an upright spine, but I would argue that leaning forwards extends the hips, extending the reach of the leg. At the same time, it provides a strong counter-balance for the kicking leg. Last but not least, it also moves your head further away from an attacker.

When you execute a round kick without fully engaging the hips, the torque in your body resists the motion of the kick
But when you rotate your hips around the Y axis by pivoting on your supporting leg, all of the forces work in harmony to maximise your power
And as you can see in this side view, there is minimal spinal twisting to limit your range of movement

Round kicks are a whole different story. In my opinion, use of the hips during round kicks is greatly misunderstood within GKR. I spent years being told that it was crucial to keep my body upright and my hips facing forwards, or at least to save my hips till the end of the kick. Within a very short time, I realised that this was not the way that any of the martial artists on the cover of magazines or in the movies did it. Furthermore, it really hurt my back to do it this way.

It’s true that there are a tiny few exceptionally flexible, and strong kickers, who can deliver a head-height round kick seemingly without adjusting their body posture at all. Most of us can deliver such kicks to knee height if we're lucky! These are snap kicks, delivered for speed and surprise value, and they work well close up. However, they are significantly less powerful than a full, hips engaged round kick because they only impact with the weight of the leg, rather than the momentum of the entire body. Turning the hip at the end is like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted! The kick contacts, then you turn the hips. Weeeird.

To use your hips properly in a round kick, you turn your hips first. This draws the kicking leg up with a powerful whipping action. Think of a metal ruler - if you hold both ends down, whilst lifting the middle, it bends in the middle. If you then release one end, it pings up very quickly as the stored potential energy is released.

You also raise the hip on the kicking side, which helps to direct the kick towards the target.

As with the side kick, the heel of the supporting leg twists towards the target, adding stability. It also enables you to project the hip towards the target adding extension to the range of the kick. This is a greatly neglected aspect of round kicks (and hook kicks), and may be one of the reasons that most GKR fighters do not maximise the use of their round kicks during fighting.

There is an interesting variant on hip action during a front kick that I have found surprisingly effective. It can be used with both types of kick, and like the hip rotation, can be practiced big to get the feel, but is best executed quite small for effectiveness.

It works like this: throw your shoulders forwards a little, then draw them back, sending a small wave down your body. Allow the forwards motion to travel down your body through your hips. As the wave reaches your hips, draw your foot back a little (almost as if you are about to start running but the foot has slipped on ice). Allow the wave to continue down your leg and whip the foot forward sharply. You’ll be surprised at the speed you can generate. This appears to be like doing the counter movement when you crack a whip (one movement to get the whip started and another to add the crack at the end).