My Side Kick Training Transformation: Wish I Knew This Sooner!

In this #episode184 of #fightchatfriday we look at how our Side Kick training has transformed over the years. We give you insight to how we now train this with clips from a recent seminar of ours in Sweden. We use the constraint led approach to focus on particular skills to make the front leg yop chagi more effective for ITF Sparring by focusing on timing, distance, rhythm and counter attacks in a fun competitive way.
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[@TKDCoachAcademy]

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[@breandandennehy906]

Nice ideas. Will be using some of that this evening with my own students!

[@breandandennehy906]

Very happy to report that we had very good success with this in Friday night's class. Students as young as 9 grasped the concept and of course gave some opportunity to progress and regress the drill. Stronger students used their power and/or height to overpower the kicker or vice versa for the blocker. Useful to remove dominant leg and/or side to balance drill to allow equal opportunity to win. Also prompted good thought processes on strategy.

[@stephenince9983]

👏 👏 good stuff

[@TKDCoachAcademy]

We know you have Side Kick dialed in Stephen 😁😉

[@TKDslinger]

Thanks, I will try this next week. However, don't you think the "traditional" pad work is still also important? At least fir beginners, some have trouble even kicking with the front leg.

[@koirrah5986]

Imho, those are some what separate skills. 1) Execute a succesful straight kick with front leg in a live "play" 2) Kick a perfect front leg side kick. You can reach 1 without never doing 2, but not vice versa. I novadays teach even kicks as "assignments" not as techniques. It's faster to teach and faster to learn. E.g. "Stamp the pad with front leg hard and fast." After 100 reps all the kicks look more or less like side kicks. Takes 5sec to teach and then just sweat, blood and tears 😅

[@TKDCoachAcademy]

Doing some traditional padwork training beforehand is tempting for sure. Its how we have been told, to develop techniques through repetition. The thing is, multiple research studies prove there is no such thing as the "perfect technique". The exact same technique can never appear twice. There are always variations. It shows the most skilled performers actually adjust subconsciously mid movement based on information they perceive (eg: distance, timing, etc). What you want is repetition without repetition. This is repeating the same skill (side kick) against a particular task but the training partner is not giving the exact same looks every time. Basically once both training partners have a particular objective, that is a great start. For myself, my young students never had to drill or do much padwork as beginners to "get" the technique first. I nearly always use two older students to demonstrate the task first so everyone gets an idea of what it looks like. Once you get an understanding of some principles of how the movement should look, I would get straight into semi live tasks (like all these in this video). The task itself should ideally be a teacher too. If they keep getting closed down for example they might be stepping before kicking and that can be addressed and discussed to learn from that quicker. Padwork probably won't have the same feedback loop as there are no consequences in padwork. Just get started and adjust as you go 👍

[@MA1980c]

Do you agreed that too much heavy bag kicking slows you down? I've found that my mechanics adjust to the heavier target and I brace for impact/tense more than if I kick air