Improving the side kick

[d0ugbug]

I hardly ever use the side kick but as I'm going back to training id like to get my kicking game back upto 100%

I can kick over head hight now doing a roundhouse, axe kick, snap / pushing kicks, twisting and all the crescent kicks without any effort both before and after warming up (i.e kicking cold)

Now my side kick is poor! I can hold a chamber hip hight but when I push the kick out it slides to be a kick just around knee height! I can also kick head height with it if its more of a flick, connecting with the ball of my foot instead of heal/foot sword plus my leg does not straighten fully.

So what can I do to improve and strengthen that kick

[Llamageddon]

Well apart from all the stretching stuff, have you checked the alignment of your hips and supporting foot? I'm not the most flexible person in the world (understatement!) but I find when everything is aligned properly it's obviously much easier.

ideally your supporting foot should be rotated almost 180 deg. With your hips rotating around 90 deg. Rotating your foot this much opens your hips to get the extra range of movement, whilst hip rotation will determine whether or not you're performing a side kick or a back kick. Obviously if your hips were to follow your foot it'd be a back kick, but stopping the hip rotation at about 90 deg should give you a lot more freedom to kick higher.

Hope that helps

[Mitch]

Check the angle of the leg and the pelvis. If you're kicking straight to the side with your pelvis upright you'll not be able to kick high. You need to tilt your pelvis to allow the ball of the femur to move in the socket.

There's a post from VZ that explains this in much more detail somewhere in here.

Other than that it's lots of abductor and adductor work. Look for the Bill Wallace vids VZ has posted, they have sets of exercises you can do to work on this.

Mitch

[Patrick Smith]

This Stadion column should explain it: http://stadion.com/column_stretch02.html

[TheAngle]

Here are the best (in my oppinion) instructional videos on side kick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1v6pPt-4w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfNSBQGjWDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8HLJenYKeQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pJGBmLeOC8&feature=related

If only this stuff was around when I started training.