Kicking your hands

Hi!

You know by now that Wenhsiuquan is Kungfu that has a lot of Karate in it, right?

Well- technically... Names are just names, but it helps to know that much of Wenhisuquan's technique comes from Karate while about equally as much comes from Kungfu.

That is not where it stops, though. Wenhsiuquan is not made up of fighting techniques. Just like Kungfu- it has its own specialised training exercises too.

I have found that no matter what style you like to study- you could do well to take Shaolin's exercises with you and try them out.

The one exercise that I have found useful for not only making my legs more flexible, but also to give my kicks that extra snap is an exercise called "Lohan Kicks Oranges". Yes- it is weird that the name of a Kung Fu technique always has to be a sentence...

The exercise works like this:

Standing upright with your feet shoulder width apart with your arms spread out, palms down...

you kick the left palm with the right foot... 

and...

your right hand with your left foot.

It is usually repeated 10 to 20 times.

What you DON'T do is bring your hand down to slap your shin. You have to kick up for your shin to hit your palm.

Aside from improving flexibility this exercise also conditions the palm to strike hard targets and the shins get toughened as well.

I have modified this exercise a bit by, for one, keeping the hands up at my own head height.

Do Karate for long enough and you find that there are katas containing a crescent kick with which you kick into your own hand.

Doing this repeatedly from horse stance, alternating the legs, also helps a lot to keep legs flexible and able to kick above waist-level.

I have modified this exercise a bit to help me with my side kicks and roundhouse kicks.

These kicks rely a lot on the side abdominal muscles to get to head height. Hands held out at head- height provide a good target height to go for.

The hands stay where they are for the legs to kick upwards towards them.

In this case it should be the outside of the lower leg slapping against the palm.

Keeping the shoulders level as much as possible and the head as undisturbed as you can helps to keep the upper and lower body sufficiently connected during the kick.

I like to be able to recover quickly enough from a kick to be able to throw another kick or a punch soon afterwards. Just leaning away from a high side kick does not only put you off balance for a while, but also makes it more difficult to follow up the kick with another technique.

Keeping the hands in place also makes work for the side abdominal muscles in raising the legs high enough.  

Using the same principle- I practice high roundhouse kicks like this as well.

In the case of the roundhouse kick you do not need to kick the hand, but the hand does give you a target height to clear. I have found that my knee can get raised to about shoulder height- just below the hand- then the shin can kick out a lot higher.

This video I have found on Jade Xu's Youtube channel shows how her leg brushes against her palms with her outside crescent kicks.

https://youtu.be/DXQVjxVm3a0

A lot of what we gain in Kungfu comes from regular exercise. Even doing 10 repetitions of these exercises every day for 3 months will add height and power to your kicks and kicking high will feel easy and natural.

Try them out and let me know how you do.

That's it for now. Stay well and train well. :)