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Balance Tips
To kick in martial arts, you need to improve balance.
Balance is very easy to achieve. Balance when kicking is not!
It takes practice to master your balance.
Fortunately, you are in complete control of your own destiny when it comes to balance.
There is only one person who is able to improve your balance and in turn improve your kicking ability, and that is you.
It might all sound too obvious, saying that it is you and you alone that can master your kicking ability when it comes to balance. Believe it or not there are a lot of people out there that blame their poor balance or lack of control of balance to the fact that they are kicking at the time. True you will lose balance if you kick your leg out violently, but it is not the kick that is at fault, it is your own understanding of personal balance.
Let me give you an example, try this before you read on.
Stand up. Put both feet together and keep your arms to your side. Now lift up your right leg slowly (taking about 10 seconds) up to knee height keeping your foot next to your knee. Put your right leg down again slowly. Do the same with your left leg. Throughout that movement you were losing balance and regaining balance. You will have noticed that even if you did not fall and have to replace your foot on the floor to regain balance you felt your balance altering via the head, shoulders and especially the support leg and foot. You will have transferred all of your weight over to your supporting leg and balanced your head centrally above the leg and hip. You will have felt yourself altering your balance through the supporting leg and foot more than any other part of your body. This is extremely important, because this is where all the elements of your balance are focused.
Throughout that movement you would have felt the supporting foot adjusting many times to keep your balance. Probably feeling the weight going over to the outside edge of your foot temporarily before readjusting to spreading the weight to the whole of the sole of the foot. Try it again, and you will feel the foot on the floor working very hard to combat the balance. This is the key to your new approach to kicking in balance. Do not worry if your foot is doing this, as this is essential to your balance.
There is so much you can do to improve your balance for kicking when you are not at the gym. When you are at home or wherever, you can constantly challenge yourself to balance. Practice as much as possible without your footwear on so that you get a real feel for the support foot working.
Next, we will try the balance exercise with a kick movement.
This time repeat the exercise but this time when the foot has reached knee height kick out in front of the body into a front kick position and hold for about 5 seconds then return to a standing position. Remember to perform all the movements slowly. The slower you can perform them the better you will understand and improve your balance.
If you can perform the kick slowly and keep your balance then you are well on the road to perfecting your kicking with good control. Obviously, this is very difficult and you will be tempted to speed up the movement to regain your balance. Try and avoid this, this is the discovery phase, when you need to understand why you are going off balance. It is usually to do with the position of your support foot or head as opposed to the speed of the kick. Be patient with yourself and analyze the reason for the loss of balance.
If you can kick slow and keep your balance then you can and will be able to kick quickly and keep your balance.
Try this exercise now before reading on. Perform the exercise a couple of times with both legs. Try it with the side kick position as well
i.e. kicking out to the side of the body instead of in front of the body.
It is a good idea to perform these exercises without any footwear on, practice on a firm, flat surface.
Keep your arms into your body in a guard position. In other words do not let your arms flail around and out away from the body to assist with your balance. If you practice like this then you will kick like this.
Your arms are kept in, to maintain a self-defence form.
9 times out of 10 your opponent, especially if they are a good counter fighter, will wait for you to kick before they attack! (after all you are standing on one leg and are most probably off balance!)
If you have practiced these few exercises, here are a few more tips to improve your balance immediately.
1/ Make sure your support leg i.e. the one holding your weight that you are not kicking with, is locked straight! Do not bend at the knee at all. Lock it!
Try it again and you will see an immediate improvement in your balance. If you can not lock it because you are kicking too high, then you are kicking too high beyond your flexibility range. This locking of the leg is not easy with the front kick, so you can bend your leg slightly on that one, but all the other kicks lock it. In fact with the front kick, turn your supporting foot slightly out to the 11'o'clock position. This helps with the holding of the kick.
2/ Make that support foot work harder to keep your balance. You will be amazed at how effective the support foot is at correcting balance. It is probably the one main influencing factor. Experiment with it to see how easy it is to correct your balance when you are in a kicking position. Get your balance, then alter the supporting foot position, you will see how it actually throws you off balance if you alter it. Try all different positions of the support foot to see which one feels the most comfortable with each particular kick. This position will alter according to the type of kick and the height.
3/ Turn that supporting foot out and around to improve balance especially in the turning and sidekick positions. Usually the more you turn your support foot away from the kick the better the stability. This is usually governed by the height of your kick and direction relative to your hip position.
4/ This is a good tip.
When you are holding your leg out and trying to keep your balance make sure you have your eyes fixed on a stationary object. Look at a point on the wall beyond your foot; pick a mark or pattern out on the wall and stare at it.
Do not look at your foot or the floor or the instructor or anything, except a solid fixed object.
Also keep the head as still as possible.
Try it now, you will see a real improvement in your balance.
Usually the eyes fix onto the kicking foot or you dart a glance everywhere.
It is important to concentrate on a non-moving object.
This is relevant when holding the kick in a stationary position, not when you are sparring etc.
5/ Try to keep your head above the support leg as much as possible this is to try to centre the balance. Good flexibility will assist this, but still try to do it if you can. In other words do not throw your head away from the kicking leg too much in fact do the opposite and try to nod towards it.
6/ If your find that when you are delivering a sidekick or turning kick and you are falling off balance backwards. Try to turn the supporting foot away even more into an opposite position to the kicking direction. If you feel that when you are delivering the kick that you are rolling on the knife edge of the support foot that is usually an indication that you need to turn the foot a little more. Try it!
In summary:
Lock the support leg.
Turn the support foot as much as you need to (try it at 180 degrees if need be)
Keep the head above or towards the centre of balance as much as possible and as still as possible.
Avoid using the arms to regain balance
Remember if you can kick slow and hold your balance, you can kick fast and hold your balance.
Practice all the above tips using all kick techniques.
Advanced training, when you hold out your leg in a kick position double or triple your kicks and regain your balance.
With practice your error in balance will lessen and your recovery will quicken.
Good Balancing!
There is plenty to come in the tips and training sections, look out for them in the future.
Elite Freestyle Karate & Kickboxing International