Questions and Answers on Technical Training

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Question:
I wonder with all of the scientific information you have if you have addressed [the issue of injury to] the knees when doing many repetitions of kicks? I have heard that these high repetitions will give knee problems. Are you aware of any of these problems and do you have any suggestions for a beginner to avoid these problems?

I am referring to past rumors and then recent personal experience, not anything I have ever seen published. The rumors I've heard in the past [are] that the repetitive “snapping out” of the leg to full extension will (or can) wear out the knee joint. And I have recently been working with kicks such as the Front Toe kick and Roundhouse kick, trying to get power in it from my hips, and I've been noticing a soreness just above the patella and a stiffness in the knees in general. Feels like tendinitis. Is this something you have ever experienced or heard of in training and are there any possible biomechanical corrections you might suggest?

Answer:
Rational training strengthens the body. In my experience with hundreds of students, the great number of kicks they throw makes their knees stronger—so strong that most grappling kneelocks do not work on them.

Generally pain in exercised joints is caused by poor technique or insufficient fitness: not enough strength to properly align the limbs, not enough muscular endurance to preserve sufficient strength during long sets of repetitions, not enough flexibility to perform movements with ease. It takes a few months of general fitness training before a person is ready for learning fighting techniques.

Instructors who allow beginners to practice kicks without going through this basic training set them up for injuries. The activities of these few months, during which students learn stances, footwork, fist and foot positions while also performing variety of conditioning exercises, are needed to develop sufficient strength, muscular endurance, kinesthetic sense, balance, and flexibility—especially the mobility of hip joint.

One of the possible causes of knee and patella problems is insufficient range of rotation in the hip joint during the kick because it changes the patello-femoral tracking. You can notice that as a person spreads the legs wider when standing in a straddle stance the patellae (kneecaps) move away (to the outside) from their original position. This happens because in the straddle stance the thigh bones are made to face mostly forward while the outside part of the quadriceps pulls at the kneecap.

Something similar happens during a kick if the kicker does not have enough range of motion in the hip joint for the required amount of outside rotation of the supporting thigh and the outside part of the quadriceps of the kicking leg is tight. During kicking the quadriceps pulls the patella firmly against the thigh, and if the patella is in the wrong spot then that is where it will rub. You can try to do a roundhouse kick without rotating your supporting leg (having your supporting foot face forward or at most sideways). You should notice that the patella of your kicking leg is pulled to the side. If you do a roundhouse kick with your supporting leg fully rotated so its foot points back, the patella of the kicking leg should be in its normal position.

Another cause of joint problems is kicking “the air” rather than bags or shields. While kicking the targets, students have better control of the path of the kick, especially its final phase whereas without a solid target joints are often overextended (what you call “snapping out” of the leg to full extension).

Mac Mierzejewski
Author of Power High Kicks with No Warm-Up! teaches karate at Edmonton Kyokushin Karate Club in Edmonton, Alberta.

Question:
I am a 48-year-old female in very good physical condition. I tore the anterior cruciate ligament in my knee while doing a roundhouse drill. My heel wasn't lifted when I kicked the target. With the full body weight turning, my knee took a good torque. Is it possible, if allowed, to get back into class at 4 months?

Answer:
I have tried to recreate the situation that lead to your ACL tear and I could not. I did it two ways, one—with a turn on the ball of the foot and raising the heel, and the second—planting the whole foot and turning on that whole foot (the “shoving” roundhouse kick). I could not do it in such a manner as to feel any torque on the knee of the supporting leg. My guess is that your injury was caused by any or all of the following:

1. Poor explanation and demonstration of the technique.

2. Wrong sequence of teaching lead-up skills enumerated in the seventh article of my column prior to teaching the roundhouse kick.

3. Not enough drilling in the lead-up skills in previous months so the skill of correct synchronization of the turn of the supporting foot and of the rotation of hips was not permanently instilled.

4. Insufficient strength of legs for practicing this technique.

5. Poor sport-specific endurance (see point 3), which caused fatigue and desynchronization and discoordination in your technique.

6. Fatigue resulting from conditioning exercises (strength, muscular endurance) done during the workout prior to fighting and kicking drills. It is a common practice for bad instructors to lead their class through fatiguing conditioning prior to technical drills. They call it “warm-up” but it is not. Warm-up is not supposed to fatigue.

7. Static stretching prior to kicking drills. Such stretching is detrimental to neuromuscular coordination and can predispose one for an injury. In the next article of this column I will deal with this issue at greater length.

In the light of the above I would question the sense of ever returning to this class.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
I am at the end of my first year of taking karate. I've been recently told by a shodan [first degree black belt] that my difficulty with roundhouse kicks is based on coordination. Can you elaborate on this (confirm or deny, and mention if it is covered in any of your newsletters or books)?

Answer:
I don't think coordination is the problem. I think that you have a wrong image of the form of movement (see my answer to the next question). Developing coordination is covered in depth in Józef Drabik's Children and Sports Training.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
For the roundhouse kick, I understand that I have to lift the knee into kicking position, move kicking foot to near my buttocks, and then raise the calf parallel to the floor (foot pointing out) and turn and deliver the kick.

Answer:
This is wrong. This so-called side chamber can ruin your hips.

Funny thing about chambering far to the side—Japanese stylists show it this way but those of them that can kick really high do it differently—chambering in front. You can see this on Sabaki Method by Joko Ninomiya from Enshin Karate. The demonstrator shows it one way (wide side chamber) and then when he does it fast he chambers in front. La savate and La Boxe Francaise (French boxing), French self-defense and sport, use the front chamber for roundhouse kicks. Mac Mierzejewski, a winner at several international Kyokushin tournaments, used roundhouse kick to the head in self-defense when he worked as a bouncer during his university studies. He teaches the front chamber, and on his video Power High Kicks with No Warm-Up! (Stadion Publishing) he shows the tremendous power of such kicks.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
I find that I'm having a knee lowering problem with the round kick, i.e., lowering the knee before turning and delivering the kick. Based on that “performance” I was told that it was an issue of coordination.

Answer:
No. It is an issue of having the wrong image of the form of movement resulting from poor demonstration, poor selection of “lead-up” exercises—for example, not enough practice of the knee kick—and no knowledge of remedies. These are all faults of the instructor.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
I want to be able to master the techniques needed for the round kick and progress further in my system.

Answer:
I think that to learn technique right you must observe people who do it right and then practice it that way yourself. Get the video Power High Kicks with No Warm-Up! or videos of Thai boxing, or La Boxe Francaise and watch them.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
So far, I can only do a low side kick. In the past, when trying to learn by doing, I've found that with the side kick, from front stance, I had a tendency to lift my knee to kicking position and then when turning around, and delivering the kick, I start to point my knee downwards and then shoot it out; thereby wasting effort and losing power for the kick.

Answer:
You are not supposed to “turn around,” just 90 degrees. It looks like “an instructor” problem. After six months you are supposed to work on front knee kicks, which lay the foundation of hip strength and chambering habits for other kicks. Side kicks are to be learned first without any turns—just kicks to the side. Only when that form is mastered you begin working on the side kick to the front, which requires a quarter turn of the body. Dropping the knee may be caused by weak psoas and lack of the habit of a proper, high chamber. This is caused by insufficient practice of the front knee kick (hiza geri) and then the front kick (mae geri).

Thomas Kurz

Question:
You answered that dropping the knee while kicking may be caused by a weak psoas. What is that and how should I build it up?

Answer:
This muscle—often called a “runner's muscle”—originates in front of the spinal column and attaches to the thigh bone. It moves your thigh forward and up if you stand and raises your trunk if you lie down. Exercises for strengthening it are shown on the video Secrets of Stretching.

This question is another beauty—if your instructor doesn't know the answer, what does he or she know? It is an instructor's job to know functional anatomy. After all, the psoas muscle is often overworked by kickers, so knowing about it, how to strengthen it, and how to recognize its weakness, is essential if you want to be counted as one who pays attention to what he or she does. Even if the instructor never studied anatomy—why would such a person be an instructor?—he or she could learn about it in the course of practice.

Thomas Kurz

Question:
I am in an organization that encourages you to pick up things on your own and when they see your mistakes, correct them. It is to build confidence and teach you to gain insight into the techniques. I have gone from white to yellow [belt] (including breaks with front kick—2 boards) in 2 months and then to green and side kick in the next 7 months. I've done very well with the katas and enjoy what I'm doing.

Answer:
This confirms my “diagnosis,” that your problems are a fault of the instructor. You went from the white belt (zero) to breaking two boards with front kick in two months. (By the way, breaking two standard pine boards is hardly a feat of anything.)

Before you learn the front kick you must master the knee kick (hiza geri). To master the knee kick you need to do many hundreds of knee kicks from at least two fighting stances, and be able to set up your opponent for these kicks with punches and footwork. Getting proficient with two fighting stances, two punches, two or three blocks, and the knee kick takes about six months if one practices 3–4 days per week.

Thomas Kurz

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