I just read this: The Golden Kick – How To Improve Your Thai Kick I've seen some of Sylvie's vlogs before and I find them quite good. (Keep in mind I'm a beginner though, so don't trust my judgement.) Anyway, here she is talking about the more Western style round kick vs the "Golden" style kick--where you don't swing your leg out wide, but just bring it up alongside the target and then turn in at the end, instead of turning the hip at the start of the movement. I'm curious what others think of this article; have you been taught the wider swinging kick? I was taught the wider swinging kick, I believe. I'll play around with the golden kick on my bag sometime. EDIT: I see these two styles of kick are also discussed in a stickied thread on the Thai style roundhouse kick... sorry should have searched first.
I started by learning the TKD style round kick in that article. When I cross trained with Muay Thai, boxing and MMA gyms they all taught the wide baseball bat style, I always thought that was the MT standard, and to me it felt like a better way to get power into a shin strike Vs a instep strike. Over the years I ended up doing a mix of both as I felt the the wide style was too telegraphed, and the TKD style did not generate the right power for a shin kick.
If memory serves I think I have heard of this style of Tucked leg round kick being used in kyokushin karate as well. If only we had some one who knows about karate kicking who could contribute.
Nice, thanks for sharing. Im gonna try that on the bag next chance I get. Its kind of like a twisted J shape for trajectory...
Near as I can tell from that, we have both kicks. We call one the roundhouse and the other one a wheel kick. (Doing a bit of googling, I see other styles use the term wheel kick for a totally different kick.) Standard roundhouse kick- with the wide swing - we learn in our first set of kicks. We learn the wheel kick at the next level after that. Good stuff that article and the video with it. Although I wish the camera angle showed the full legs from the ground up all the time.
I've learned numerous ways to throw a roundhouse kick and to be quite honest there's a time and place for all of them in the ring. To put it simple whatever works works. Don't get caught up in searching for that picture perfect kick because different styles of kicking work for different scenarios and people.
