Kickboxing Exercises : Kickboxing technique: side kick

Hi my name is Tristan at the Austin Martial Arts Academy. We’re online at http://www.austinmartialarts.com. Okay we’re on to our next kick here in the kickboxing series, this is the side kick. We’re going to continue with the focus mitts, I’m the coach, I hold the mitts against my body and then I pop them up for my partner. But in learning the kick I’m just going to hold it out, stand off to the side here; now remember there are four parts to the kick. The first is the chamber, so she brings the knee up, now there’s the extension, recoil and then you place the foot back down. Okay that’s a sidekick. In order to get a good side kick she’s got to rotate the hips, so you’ll see she drew the leg up like a front kick at first, then recoils. Let’s look at that one more time, notice how she twists the hips, it looks like she’s going to do a front kick right at you but in fact it goes out to the side. And I’m going to hold her here, notice how the toes are below the heal, a lot of times we’ll see this on side kicks, with the foot turned up like that a lot of torque on your knee. That’s a no-no and it doesn’t have any power. Twist your hips over, that’s a side kick. Okay. And recoil. She might slide up a little bit to get some momentum that you can add to your kick. Okay, now you can through in a spinning side kick real quick, she’ll kick with her rear leg. Just like on the shin kick and the round kick you must turn your front foot out; this is a big no-no we see. People are hurting their knees because they’re not turning their foot out. Girls if you’re in those kick boxing classes and you’re throwing out a million reps as fast as can be, slow down and learn to kick right. Here it is, watch closely. She’s going to spin the foot, watch the side kick. I’m going to put her on the heavy bag real quick. Okay, there’s your side kick.