Share your favorite bodyweight exercises to improve your kicking power

I've been focusing a lot more on my kicks lately, specifically what I can do body weight-wise for them. Here's a couple of my current favorites, and looking to see what else everyone has as their own favorites.

(1) Alternating Hip Bridge with Front Kick - I really feel this one has been helping my front kicks a lot. Watch 2:54 of this video.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztxAEl8ErMY&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Muay Thai & MMA Training/Conditioning Circuit 1[/ame]

(2) Squat Kicks - You can never go wrong with these. I usually alternate a set of front kicks with a set of roundhouse kicks, depending on the workout. Sometimes I'll do them quick, sometimes I'll slow them down.

(3) Four Way Lunges - I like to do these slow. I do mine a bit different than this video as I like to walk around in a box. I would do a forward lunge with my left foot, a side lunge to the right, a reverse lunge with my left foot, and then a side lunge to the left. Then I repeat on the other side. I've also had fun adding in kicks as well when doing it this way. I like to do front kick - roundhouse kick - back kick - side kick.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX8AJ9pjTBM&feature=related"]YouTube - 4 way Lunge[/ame]

(4) Knee Jumps - I really feel this one in the hamstrings and it's just fun. Don't be a **** like me though and try it without padding for your knees on your first time. You'll quickly learn how bad of an idea that is.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNZuNlymjck&feature=related"]YouTube - Knee-Jump - Exercise Tips[/ame]

(5) Pistols - I pretty much suck at these, but I had a lot better luck holding a medicine ball while I did them for counterbalance. I can only do a few shaky reps per leg, but I try to do a few assisted using the door frame afterwards. Being a bigger guy sucks for doing pistols.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEBol54EjVE"]YouTube - Pistols - One Leg squat[/ame]

 

slow kicks.

 

@Kuma - pretty hard to go wrong with any of the drills that you've shown here. Most of them I've tried and use but others I've not thrown into the mix. Yet. No time like the present eh?

Lunges are a staple of most of my workouts. Primarily because they really work to improve the stabilization of the knee. They tend to work the sartorius muscle like crazy which is a great one for stability on the supporting leg in kicks. If your hydration and salts aren't up to scratch you will notice it very quickly in the form of a cramp in the sartorius. Nightmare when it happen. Ouch. The lunges work the hamstrings a lot as well. I've seen people charge into a session of lunges only to not be able to walk the next day due to very tight hams. Easy does it I guess is the way to approach them for those not used to doing them. They also will hit the adductors very heavy as well.

At the moment I'm exploring slightly different form on the lunge. Up until recently I'd done lunges primarily with the knee over the ankle... so that knee joint at a 90-degrees. But as more and more of the guys I work and train with have been out to the US or Canada to do their Poliquin certs 1-3 they have been shown how Poliquin has the knee move past the ankle during his lunges. Any of you who have worked in a gym will have heard a PT at some point telling their clients NOT to move their knee past their ankle as it's the land of impending injury or patellar tendonitis. Apparently Poliquin uses the knee past ankle even when their is weight involved. So it's got me to thinking along the same lines to a certain extent. We have that range of motion to begin with - so if we only ever lunge with our knee's in the 90-degree position then are working in a strength deficit because of our strict adherence to form? Is this safe to do at bodyweight and the risk only goes up exponentially once we have weight applied over this range of motion?

I'm still researching it at the moment - as the knee's are something I don't take lightly at all. I've never been prone to knee pains with the exception of descents on mountaineering routes and trail running - and I'm not about to start now... so it's going to take some time to do enough research before I throw them into a program with the weighted variation. But it is very, very interesting the differing schools of thought. One interesting point that Poliquin makes is:

"Here's one for that annoying personal trainer at your gym who has an aneurism whenever he sees your knee travel past your toes during a lunge or split squat: tell him to climb up a flight of stairs and see how often his knee travels past his toes."

So there are a lot of questions I still have yet to answer. When going up a flight of stairs or decelerating in sport or even encountering resistance (say hitting an opponent with a shoot in wrestling/MMA)... there is already a huge amount of weight and force being applied to knees with the knee past the ankle position. So why would we neglect this when training in the controlled environment of the weight room? I'm wondering what the difference in weight would be from say climbing stairs - or even climbing stairs with a load (suitcase or bags of groceries for example) and that of say two 50lb dumbells in either hand as your perform a lunge with you knee moving out past your toes?

Food for thought.

 

Yeah, what he said.

 

Hill running is good too.
I personally like Squats and Sumo dead-lifts (easier on the knees).

 

Not really a body weight exercise, but I'd be interested in trying this sometime:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-O_sAf0FMs"]YouTube - power kick training![/ame]

 

man that one leg squat is hard to do,and to do it low like the video hurts my knees..but im going to practice it it looks like it would build alot of power

 

Box jumps and burpees.
Hard to go wrong.

Some interesting points slip, I'd personally be interested in waiting a few months or even a year to see how the polo style lifters knees are before deciding on lunging like the myself.

 

I feel this is a good way to improve your kicking power.

1. You
2. Pick One Kick
3. Heavy Bag
4.1000 Kicks
5. Go

Train Harder!

 

Definitely good advice, but not the topic of the thread.

 

A good core. Abs. I reference this to an old TOM KURZ video.

Leg weights, raises, etc.

Kick practicing on heavy bags and pads.

 

first exercise of the first video made me hell out of laugh ))))