Anyone got any ideas on how to improve my kicking power? There pretty powerfull right now but i need more POWER anyone know how to increase power of your kicks?

Leg exercises. You need to increase the mass a bit, but not too much because you don't want to slow down. Do heavy weights for a bit and then when you see some improvement, start doing light weight at a bunch of repetitions. jump rope, ankle weights, that sorta thing. You also want to try to toughen your shin bone if your going to be doing alot of kicking. Kicks with the shins are vicious when you have your legs conditioned right.

Taekwondo is ALL about kicks

Taekwondo literaly means the art of kicking and punching.

To be fair, Tae Kwon Do is mostly about kicks. Punching exists, obviously, but the focus is clear.
Leg excersizes: Lunge: Take very long steps, and go down as far as possible without touching the ground. Your rear thigh should be at a 45 degree angle, and knee should almost touch the ground. Your front leg the thigh should be parallel and your shin should be perpendicular to the ground. Do as many as you can stand.
Do squat thrusts, squats with weights in 2 or 3 different arm positions, use your imagination here, I'm sure you can figure it out. And of course, practice those kicks. I use mostly sidekicks but I've been known to do spin kicks, fronts, and hooks too.

If you want to be a good\hard kicker, take an art that trains in kicking but for full contact matches. Like Kick boxing, Muay Thai, Kyokushin karate.

TKD is as a sport, not for full contact, so is Shotokan Karate.

In Muay Thai, Kick Boxing, Kyokushin, you train to harden your legs and skin on the legs, and to havbe powerfull kicks.

TKD has fancy moves, Muay Thai ,Kick boxing and Kyokushin will help you develop basic kicks and make them strong, in TKD, youll learn how to do a front kick, but you wont be training to harden it make it sromger and faster. In TKD it will be more concetrated on 360 kicks and other fancy ones.

Plus youll learn to use your hands.

And of course the training people here told you, thats really good training.

Something you sure need is what Dark Magneto said is harden your shin, youll do this in arts concentrated on full contact, not TKD.

Also would be good if you specify why you want to kick, for self defense? For competitions? To kick some dude in the nuts?

[This message has been edited by Mack (edited 09-27-2002).]

Street fighting.

I also want to emphasize flexibility. If you don't work on the flexibility then you'll never be able to get like those guys that can do vertical splits.

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Originally posted by insane_blaine:
Street fighting.

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I've been in and seen alot of fights but haven't seen anyone throw a kick that actually made a difference unless the other guy was already half knocked out or on the ground.

I have nothing against kicks, if you have the chance to get one in they'll be very effective. It just seems like if you can get the room to kick then the other guy isn't fighting all that hard. When I get into a fight I get in close and fight from there. If you're close the other guy can't throw a punch or a kick.

I'm not trying to say that I'm invincible. Some high kicking fucker might whoop my ass someday, but it hasn't happened yet and I've fought some guys that were pretty good.

only time i've seen kicks make a differance in a fight is when it was a low kick, i dont train to kick any higher than waist level, also in a fight the only kick id likley go for is groin or knee, but id only do either if i was attacked rather than in a fight

I've always thought high kicking would make you off-balance. If I do kick, I'd go for the shins,knees, and balls. or when they are lying down and I'm going to punt their head like a soccer ball.

For me, it'd have to be a special situation to kick high in a fight, however kicking to the knee from almost any angle will let you keep your distance on a fighter who likes to come in for a tackle. Actually, kicking the knee is effective on so many levels, and doing a side kick correctly, you move your head and torso out of punching range.

It exposes you balls if you kick above the waist. That's a good reason never to do so.
Although I can see it now, the dude side stepping you and round house kicking you in the gonads. That would hurt. Especialy if they didn't do it nancy boy style and used the ball of the foot instead.

Definately a good reason. Let your hands target the head, not your feet. There are exceptions to the rule, of course. Like I said, I like to kick low, ie the knee. You put a well placed kick there, follow through, and they'll go down. After gravity begins to take it's course, you can advance quickly and then do pretty much whatever.