explosive kicks/snap in kicks

[elskbrev]

ash_leto wrote:

Initially an instructor told me (many moons ago) that doing kicks with ankle weights would improve the speed of my kicks if I did them in an explosive fashion, but after trying it a few times I ditched the idea due to pain in the hips, knees, ankles etc. Also I noticed no increase in speed, just increased injuries (it's difficult to control some kicks done fast if there's a weight on your ankle!)

Although not on a regular scheduled basis, I started re-incorporating ankle weights back into my training always performing exercises in a slow controlled manner to improved the strength in the muscles that enable that particualr kick to gain/maintain height as opposed to speed/power.

Bands might help with the speed/power aspect.

I came across this after practicing with bands on the advice of the kinesiologist who helped me rehabilitate my hip injury. The benefit shows up when I break boards.

You see, bands increase in tensile weight the further you stretch them. That means that you are extending with greater force at the end of your kick. Take away the band and this translates into extra snap at point of contact.

Cindy

[tyciol]

Above and beyond the benefit of increasing resistance that you mentioned Cindy, there is also the momentum factor where when you accelerate the ankle weights, when they stop at the end of the kick it can jerk and if you don't absorb it with your muscles (which is hard to do when they're all stretched out at the apex) sometimes it's your tissues that end up decelerating the weight which can be painful.

Training with bands does not have this risk, although once one has increased one's force production with the bands, it would probably be good to test one''s new speed with air kicks (in addition to bag/mitt work) so that you can train how to decelerate the increased momentum of your feet. Training to miss is important since not every hit lands in a fight and if one builds one's training solely around hitting, one could be prone to self-injury when an attack is avoided.