So the other day I was doing Muay Thai bagwork (so striking with my shin). I threw one really poor kick that ended up with my striking with the top of my foot. It hurt a bit. I imagine if I had thrown it full power I could easily have injured my foot. Do most styles that strike with the foot do so with the bottom of the foot? (E.g., ball of foot, heel, etc?) Are there styles that strike with the top of the foot? How do such strikers avoid injuring their foot? Do they have to avoid hard targets like the head? I can imagine injuring my foot just doing a hard snap kick even onto a soft target, if I hit with the top of my foot...
Do NOT! try this at home... https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=507587136292877&id=100011247855747 Travess
On a more serious note, we (my Karate club) generally favour striking with the shin, especially for lower level targets, but drill both ball of the foot and roof of the foot for the higher target areas. As a point of interest, I have only damaged my foot once as a result of connecting with a target (the head) and that was when I landed with the roof of my foot - Though it was poorly executed on my part. Travess
Landing with the instep can work OK. Seen plenty of leg kicks and such land with the toes and instep (by accident) and the fighter still carries on. And of course softer targets are fine to hit with the instep. Elbows are bad to hit with any part of your leg.
That does seem a bit much. It looks like she is hitting with the top part of the ankle, rather than the top of the foot though. (Where the leg and foot meet, rather than hitting, e.g., the topside of the ball of your foot.)
Not as much as the other guy I'd wager! Though it does highlight a good point, one that is also touched upon in Morik's other thread (hitting the heavy-bag bareknuckled) that what ever 'tool' the striker uses, there will always be a certain amount of damage/impact to be absorbed. Travess
I definitely prefer using my shin and find it safe to use on legs and torso when there is high potential for a limb to block you. On head kicks I much prefer using my instep, although I can't recall ever using it in heavy contact without instep padding on, and usually landing on a head guard opponent. With decent padding on its not such an issue in sparring, depends on your class policy on the type of padding to use. I've kicked elbow/knee in light sparring with no pads on the instep and it's worse the further to the end of the foot towards the toes, I think it all comes down to what @Travess said about reabsorption. Do you spar without foot/shin pads often?
I used to spar at my old gym but my new gym doesn't have the beginner or all-ranks classes spar, so I gotta wait til I'm in the advanced class.
I always aim to hit with the shin. But if I connect with the instep, I'm just as happy. It's still a nice hard bit of the foot. And obviously connecting with the toes aren't great. Especially if/when the toes hit the elbow. My foot swelled so much my toes went out of alignment.
The impact was right in the middle of the foot. But all the blood was pushed to the toes where the bruises are..
If you consider foot sweep is kick then one kind of the foot sweep is to use your instep to kick on your opponent's ankle (the other kind of foot sweep use you inner edge to sweep your opponent's instep).
as a general principle for both hands and feet. Solid muscle blocks are more robust to force. the heal of the hand the heal of the foot the palm of the hand the sole of the foot are robust and can be used to strike hard areas. In addition the long bones in the arm and the shin are also robust and good at transmitting force away from the impact point. So good for striking hard areas. More fragile areas of the hand and foot e.g the back of the hand and the top of the foot should be reserved for soft targets such as the Groin / nose. when it comes to striking with the instep - It can be done akin to a ridge hand strike, using the muscle of the instep rather than the bone. But to do this properly requires a high degree of flexibility in the legs. the ball of the foot is actually very robust, but the toes have to be curled well back, and during the kick the toes/top of the foot is often exposed to counters such as elbows ( which is not nice)
