A number of posts seem to mention doing slow kicks to develope kicking strength and I suppose help with your flexibility. I have very little flexibility when cold and even when warmed up I use momentum with my muay thai kicks. How would you go about doing them ?
go about doing what? slow kicks?? best way is start off maybe with 1 hand on the wall to help with balance - after time let go - see how long u can hold the kick out - defo helps with leg strength!
Slow kicking will neither help your strength nor flexibility. Standing on one leg for a prolonged period of time will improve your balance and control, but that's it. For strength, do squats, deadlifts, and single leg variations thereof. For dynamic flexibility, do lots of kicks with good form and slowly increase your range of motion. Dynamic flexibility (the kind you need for kicking) boils down to the ability to activate the antagonist to the muscle that's stretching very quickly and forcefully with correct timing. In other words, kicking high has less to do with how much you stretch your hamstrings (has almost zero to do with this, as the carryover between static and dynamic flexibility is about 40%, which is terrible) and more to do with your ability to contract your quadriceps at the right time to create a rapid, brief stretch in the hamstring. Also, it should be noted, the more you practice your kicks slowly, the more you're negatively impacting the motor pattern, and the more you're teaching your body to move slowly.
Just go as high as you comfortably can. Make sure you work your kicks at regular speed afterwards as well. Socrastein - Have you ever done slow kicking? You are after all holding your leg up in the air for an extended period of time which causes all sorts of muscles to contract and you can get quite a sore feeling the next day if you go overboard too quickly. They build strength at specific positions for kicking. Depending on how long you hold the full extension at the end, they can also develop active flexibility.
I tend to disagree with 'Slow kicking will neither help your strength nor flexibility' because I know first hand holding out my kicks for 5, 10, 15 seconds with good balance has had a positive effect in term of strength on my legs/kick(s). Personally, I dont think slow kicks help with flexibility. Stretching is your answer there. But seriously, maybe in the sense your referring to, its not the same strengthening as squats for example, they are a great leg conditioning exercise. However I stand by my comment above which states it will help with leg strength. Its not easy to hold a side kick for example for prolonged periods of time - but the more you do 'slow kicks' the better you become at it.
Socrastein, For dynamic flexibility would I just kick on a bag or pads and just increase gradually the height of the kicks? "more to do with your ability to contract your quadriceps at the right time to create a rapid, brief stretch in the hamstring" Does this happen because of the dynamic flexibility training? Can you improve your dynamic flexibility from home with out a bag?
I would also disagree with the statement that doing the kicks slowly will not build strength. Most exercises, like push-ups, pull-ups, etc. when performed slowly definitely stress the muscles more and allow for greater growth. Kicks are the same. Also believe that strength and flexibility go together. You need the strength in your legs and hips to perform higher kicks.
There is a wealth of good information regarding stretching etc right here: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85373 have a read, you will gain some knowledge
I used to do slow kicking and hold horse stances for far longer than anyone should when I was in Kung Fu. It's almost surreal to be discussing this in fact because my first memory on MAP was debating with AdMcG years ago about strength, and what it means to be strong. I was saying something along the lines of being able to hold a kick is strength, being able to hold horse stance for 10 minutes is strength, standing on your hands is super strength, etc. He schooled me, I hated him (not for too long), and I have learned a lot since then. Perhaps I'm using a different definition of strength that everyone else, but I thought strength generally means the ability to produce force. More specifically, being really strong means you can produce a lot of force, and/or produce it very quickly. It really depends on the type of strength we're talking, there are a lot of classifications. So how much force does it take for your body to hold your leg up for a prolonged period? Even if you're very overweight and have huge heavy legs, you're still not producing a lot of force to lift it. Holding it for a long time will develop endurance, the ability to produce that small amount of force for a long time, but you won't increase your capacity for force production by any meaningful amount. It can certainly improve one's kicks in the sense that your ability to produce force is limited by how much stability you have at the involved joints. As I said you'll improve balance, which is important for being able to kick powerfully, but you aren't going to increase strength. I actually use a similar example whenever clients tell me "Exercise X is fantastic because it made my muscles burn and I was sore the next day". I tell them that if they were to hold their arm over their head for 25 minutes straight it would burn very badly, and they would be in a lot of pain the next day. But they should not think they are building shoulder size or strength. Without a minimal essential strain your muscles will not respond with hypertrophy or strength gains. Holding one's leg up is not sufficiently challenging. With a push-up you're pressing around 2/3rds of your body weight with your arms. With a pullup you're pulling nearly all your bodyweight with your arms. That takes a lot of force production, enough to elicit a response in the muscles. While extending your time under tension can be good for growth in certain cases, the term could more appropriately be termed "time under optimal tension" as Christian Thibadeau is fond of saying. Holding up your leg does not create optimal tension, not even close, and will not result in mass gains. It will result in localized muscular endurance, and that's about it. Like I said, people need to do their squats. When you can squat over 1.5x your body weight nice and deep you'll probably lose a bit of appreciation for standing on one leg for a long time. You'll also be able to kick opponents through a wall.
At one point I was squatting 2.6x bodyweight for reps but could barely hold a chudan mawashi geri (middle roundhouse kick) in the air for 10 seconds. There are all different types of strength, and strength is relative to what you do. Many aspects of strength do carry over to others, but specificity is what pays off. An Olympic lifter could probably have a pretty fair showing at a powerlifting meet, but since they train for different movements it'd be very doubtful he would win. There's really no harm in doing them, and to you they may not be optimal, but everyone responds to different things, so it's worth trying.
Below is some food for thought. Conversations about strength and conditioning often start to get all convoluted because everyone thinks they have an understanding of what strength is... but often they don't understand how it's broken down into different types of strength... so in a sense everyone is speaking a different language. Important to be on the same page and agree on the same terms otherwise it's just babble. Types of Strength: 1) Concentric Strenth/contraction: The muscle develops and shortens, causing movement to occur. 2) Eccentric Strength/contraction: The muscle lengthens while producing tension, thus braking, slowing or controlling the speed of movment 3) Isometric Strength/contraction: The muscle develops tension without producing any external movement 4) Dynamic Strength/contraction: A more accurate description of the term "isotonic". Dynamic contractions are those occurring in the presence of varying levels of muscle tension and joint speed. Dynamic contraction is used interchangeably with the European term "auxotonic". 5) Limit Strength: The ability to exceed ordinary levels of absolute strength. A person under hypnosis or perceived life-threatening stress may display this type of strength. 6) Maximal Strength: The peak force or torque that the nueromuscular system is capable of producing in a single maximal voluntary contraction, irrespective of the time element. a) Absolute Strength/endurance: The maximum amount of force your muscles can produce irrespective of body weight and time of force development. Absolute strength is important for sports in which extra body weight helps performance. Many field events in track and most positions in football require high levels of absolute strength. b) Relative Strength/endurance: The more force your muscles can produce in relation to your body weight. 7. Optimal Strength: The amount of strength needed for maximum performance in that additional strength will not improve performance. 8. Strength Endurance: The ability to produce muscular contractions over an extended period. For example, a distance runner or rower would benefit most from this type of strength. 9. Speed - Strength: a. Starting Strength: The ability of a muscle to generate maximum force at the beginning of a movement. b. Explosive Strength: The ability of the muscle to continue increasing the force developed from starting strength. c. Reactive Strength: The ability of the muscle to switch from eccentric (negative) to concentric (positive) work. These definitions by Paul Chec and they are heavily based on the work of M.C. Siff and Y.V. Verkhoshansky. You can easily do worse than basing your work on the research of Siff or Verkhoshansky... both are really pioneers in the field and are responsible for much of the actual hard data and it's interpretation that we have that exists on the subject of sports science.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJF2rLaRAZM&feature=player_embedded#at=187 You might want to take a look at this, Sacrostein. Are you going to tell Bill Wallace he is not developing kicking strength, lol?
Just watched the video. Don't you need good flexibility to get your leg that high in the first place?
I'd quite happily tell bill wallace that slow kicks like that do not build the required strength for a roundhouse kick. I'd also be willing to point him towards a whol bunch of people I've met personally who can probably kick a lot harder with a roundhouse despite being a lot lighter and never having done slow kicks in their lives for anything other than correcting a subtlety of technique. As the OP mentions his thai style roundhouse I would therefore respond in terms of thai knowledge. Go look up videos of people like Samkor, Buakaw, Yodsaenklai etc - all famous kickers. Everything I know of thai style training and coaching tells me they only do slow method stuff to correct technique - never to improve flexibility and DEFINATELY not to improve power. It'd be ike training for the 100metres sprint by doing marathon training - totally different use of muscles.
Correcting technique will build power, though. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bygQcvuxfM"]YouTube - how to train high kick! girl kick champ gracyer aki[/ame]
Power is one thing, but how much strength do you have? Pick your favourite kick, one above the waist. Now do it dead slow. Are you off balance, do you have the strength to maintain good form throughout the move? Not normally is what I have found.
