Dear MAPers, I'm curious to know if the roundhouse/turning kick will give more damage using the instep or the ball of the foot? My instructor said to always use your instep to kick(except for back kicks of course) because if you don't you could hurt yourself such as breaking your toes. Well, that's what he said. Now, I am wondering if this is true. I learn WTF TKD you see and I wonder too if your instructor said the same thing. I noticed other styles used the ball of their foot and I never hear any problem like my instructor mentioned or are there? Thanks.
If you can't pull your toes back far enough or get your hips over far enough chances are you can break your toes, or smash 'em up real good. As for round kick with the ball of your foot, there is much more penetrating force in the kick simply because you are using less surface area in your strike which means all the force is concentrated. Using your instep spreads out the impact some. Mechanics of the kick are virtually the same so it really only deals with the striking surface that you are using. One thing as well that you might want to also consider is kicking with footwear on, IE) Footware that doesn't allow you great foot mobility such as high top shoes, boots, steel toed work boots/shoes. Nature of these footware doesn't allow you to expose your instep for a strike as neatly as it does the ball of the foot, or toe. I would play around with that and see what you can come up with.
You learn WTF TKD, that was why he told you to kick with the instep. You have to bear in mind that WTF style is almost soley tournament fighting with the objective of point scoring, and in these situations using the instep makes more sense. However for 'rib shatteringly effective' kicks I'd go with the ball of the foot as it seems to be more solid, even though you do have a higher chance of breaking your own toes. Cheers, Alex
I guess it's matter of practice. When we train for competitions, or do pad/bag work at the dojang we always use the instep, but when breaking boards we are supposed to use the ball of the foot. I wouldn't recommend anyone to break boards with the ball of the foot if they haven't tried it before to avoid injury of course. As I said, matter of practice. At my Dan gradings, we were not allowed to break boards with the instep either.
I'm glad to see this thread so I can post from experience regarding injuries incurred using the ball of the foot when striking with a round house kick..... my injury involved board breaking. I agree with neryo regarding not recommending anyone to break boards with the ball of the foot if they haven't tried it before but I was working on a 6 board break having sucessfully accomplished a 5'er I naturally add another board to each attempt. Before attempting this particular break I was striking with the ball of the foot to the bag for about 10-15 minutes. Pulling back the toes is no problem for me and really not the injury that you should primarily worry about. You see your foot has a limited range of motion .... moving both backward and forward. When striking with the ball of the foot the amount of pressure forces your foot to 'fold' back meeting your shin. Hard to explain what actually happened but clearly I knew I had ruptured a tendon. I was working on a power break so I was trying to make each strike more powerful than the previous when after striking the bag on this one kick I felt a sharp pain run from the top of my foot to the base of my shin. The pain was unbearable every time I wiggled my toes and felt almost like a shin splint but far worse. I've been taking care of it on my own so not sure really what I did. This was a month ago and I still wear a brace although the pain is gone finally after 3 weeks. True I do not normally kick the bag with the ball of the foot in class (even when teaching my kickbox classes) preferring to strike with the instep so really I am physically unaccustomed and thus physically unconditioned to execute this kick with full power.
I know Im going to sound kinda d'oh on this one but.... When you guys say instep, do you mean the top of the foot? When sparring I usually apply turning kicks with the top of the foot, into the shin kinda area. What I would call the instep would be the curve on the inside of your foot/sole of foot. can't imagine how you would apply this to a turning kick, in fact I think I only actually use this for footsweeps.So I gather thats what you folks mean right? fair enough in traditional sparring/breaking I do use the ball of the foot and I have the attractive feet/toes of the traditional MA. aint it great when you go to get shoes fitted and they look at your feet aghast. I had a woman once I thought was going to faint, of course I had just broken three toes on that foot sparring. Someday I'm gonna go visit a schiropodist just to see a proffessional go faint.
So, using the ball of the foot will give more damage but it will also increase the likeliness of injuries.Hmm...I think I'm going to stick with using my instep. But Artikon is right too. If you're wearing footwear, there will be less range of motion.
I overlooked the point that Artikon make: Footwear makes a masive differance. I would kick with my toes when I'm wearing my shoes as they contain metal toecaps. But for those occassions on the street where I'm obviously going to be bearfoot D) I'll go for ball of the foot.
We spar using instep for round kicks. Since we do not use chest guards to spar, save a lot of broken ribs not getting pegged with the ball of foot. However, 99% of the time we practice round kicks using the ball. Reason as already mentioned, more concentrated surface area to convey the force. Of course, breaks always with ball. Lot of emphasis given to form during practice, getting the toes out of the way... for all the toe-breaking reasons mentioned.
KC, kicking the bag too hard with the ball of the foot is not the best idea The nature of the bag is to 'fold' when its hit, when it folds it can cause all sorts of problems. Kicking with the instep is another bad idea, unless its for sparring or other 'light' uses. Kicking hard with the instep will cause your foot to stop, and your ankle to continue going - this isnt a problem if you use the instep and the very bottom of your shin, but if you kick something with just the bottom of the instep you are likely to cause damage to your foot/ankle. Another reason not to kick with the instep is the possible damage to the metatarsel bones in your foot.
so, let's summarise: - kicking with the ball of the foot is not good. - kicking with the instep isn't good either, so what are we supposed to do with the roundhouse kick then???
I said kicking the BAG hard with the ball of the foot isn't too good for you. I never said kicking with the ball of the foot to other objects/surfaces etc is not good. After re-reading my post I probably could have been more clear but heh, watcha gonna do eh?
It's very effective. Ask any Muay Thai Boxer. But you'll need to condition it first. EDIT: Actually if you are thinking in terms of tournaments I'm not sure they allow it. But as I said, I'm not sure...
