subject: The Fastest, Hardest Kick In All Of Karate [print this page] I learned this type of kick some forty years ago in the Kang Duk Won Korean Karate. This was the forerunner of Tae Kwon Do, and the unfortunate truth is that these kicks aren't practiced anymore. Why, I don't know, because this type of kick is the hardest kick, the fastest kick I know.
I call this move, no matter what type of martial art you do it with, the pop kick. Whether you do a wheel, a side, or a snap, the basic principle doesn't change. You replace the left foot with the right foot, and place the right foot on the target...this all has to happen simultaneously.
By same time I mean that the left foot and the right foot start together, and the right foot hits the ground at the same time the left foot impacts. By doing it in this fashion the whole body gets smaller at the same time, then the whole body explodes. This causes a very pure energy pop in the energy center, which is a point a couple of inches below the navel, which is also called the tan tien.
In addition to the purity of explosion you will feel in the energy center, which will tend to concentrate energy in the kick, you will experience a sudden weight on your standing leg at the same moment you experience weight in the leg you are kicking with. This sudden weight tends to make the explosion of energy very precise, even as it increases the violence. This will really increase the energy of your technique.
If you are executing this move with a snap kick, make sure you get the knee high up so that the foot doesn't slide up the front of the target, but rather comes in straight. If you are doing a side kick, make sure that the weight of the hips really goes into the target. If you are doing a wheel kick, make sure you get the hips and kick up to a true horizontal plane.
The fourth technique would be a spinning motion to the rear, and is done with a side kick. You would practice all four kicks against a wall, learning how to lift up at the same time, and place the feet on the ground and the wall at the same time. You don't have to hit hard on a wall, save that for a bag, control is a great thing to have that will actually give you more power in the end.
We used to have all kinds of set ups for these techniques. We would slap the attacker's guard hands as we pre-stepped, and the we would do it subtle, and then be in the kick before the target knew we were on our way. As we practiced the explosion would get finer and more pure and more full of energy.
Make sure you use this technique in a variety of stances, and you will have a much larger arsenal of martial arts weapons. This is a great technique to practice, and it is born of the successful merger of karate power and TKD kicks. Japanese martial arts or Korean martial arts, this is the hardest kick, and the fastest kick, and perhaps the most effective leg technique I know.
