How To Do the Roundhouse Kick - Shadowboxing

[amazonmoh]

I'm having a hard time getting the roundhouse kick correctly when shadow boxing. Usually it ends up with me just lifting my leg to initiate the motion for reaction time training but looking nothing like a kick, or its raised at the knee and recoils back instead of completing the kick. It feels to me like the issue is that I have hard time balancing. The constant recoiling back at the 90 degree mark from the front is putting a lot of strain on my knees and I'd love some recommendations. If anyone has a mental analogy they used to get the roundhouse shadow working for them, would love to hear it.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Sylvie will probably jump on later, but this is her video of the Floating Block which really helped with her kick in shadow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=62&v=op-sjn7Sewo

The blog post on it is here.

You can see Sakmongkol teaching the floating block here below, at about the 2:25 mark:

[amazonmoh]

Why do trainers ask that the boxer do a full roundhouse kick in shadow? Just as Sylvie said, this would develop bad habit of giving your back. From your experience is there any valid reason to go 360 instead of stop and swivel back?

[Finn Cartlidge]

I think it can be beneficial to tell a beginner to do '360', I did it for a long time before changing it to the floating blocky kick thing Sylvie made a video about. 

The reason I think trainers tell boxers to do it is because it helps with the rotation of your foot, and hips, but I don't think it's something that should be used long term. Just to get used to the idea of rotation.

 

Also you might see people do the 360 kick if they're shadow boxing in a ring, they get to the ropes and they want to turn round. 

That's just my opinion anyway.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Why do trainers ask that the boxer do a full roundhouse kick in shadow? Just as Sylvie said, this would develop bad habit of giving your back. From your experience is there any valid reason to go 360 instead of stop and swivel back?

 

It is interesting because my Thai trainer Pi Nu, who I have great respect for, recently got me to abandon the floating block in shadow. I think he felt I wasn't committed enough to my kicks and wondered if the floating block was a reason for this. I'm not sure that is the case, but I changed it for him. It's a bit of a compromise. You want to shadow the whip of the leg, and keep the leg loose, which is why many turn round on the kick. But you also want to develop balance and control, which the floating block helps a lot with. My kick definitely improved when I started shadowing the floating block.

There is no one answer to this. Also, Sakmongkol has been training in Karate as well, and this might be part of the reason he favors the control of the kick. I only suggest that if you have been only whipping around on the kick it might be of benefit to try practicing the control and balance of the floating block. 

[maybethestars]

I've been taught to do the whole spin while shadowboxing, though I have issues with my kicks where I don't put enough hips into my kick and it tends to stop short. I think the spinning helps so that I don't do one of those kicks where I just snap the lower half of my leg rather than launching the whole leg into the kick. 

[Julien__]

I think that it's an equilibrium between "power" and "control".

 

If you spin then it's likely that you have more power (momentum) in the kick (because you can't stop the movement)

while if you don't spin and stop the kick in the middle, then I guess you didn't put so much power into the kick and the momentum is low enough that you can stop your movement...

 

No ?

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I think that it's an equilibrium between "power" and "control".

 

If you spin then it's likely that you have more power (momentum) in the kick (because you can't stop the movement)

while if you don't spin and stop the kick in the middle, then I guess you didn't put so much power into the kick and the momentum is low enough that you can stop your movement...

 

No ?

 

There are many ways of generating power, spinning around is only one of them. Sakmongkol was one of the hardest kicking Thai, and he trains to not spin around. In fact you almost never see top Thais spinning around and they kick with great force.

Think about if you were swinging an axe hard attempting to chop a tree down. Would you expect to spin around if you missed your target? If you were swinging a baseball bat, trying to hit the ball, would you say you only were swinging hard if you spun around in a circle?

I believe that like the swing of a bat, not spinning around forces you to generate more of your power with your hips, and throws the force more forward, at and through the target.