Ernest Cadorin

Stay Grounded, Not Stuck

Uprooting Another Misconception

During a recent training session, I noticed that a few of the students in my group were not getting very much power in their front kicks. They were kicking with spirit, but they were not using their hips. Instead of following through with the hips as they thrusted the kicking leg out, they kept their hips forward-facing and square. Fortunately, after a little more scrutiny, I found the root cause of the problem: they were not pivoting on the base foot as they kicked.

Many of our techniques require us to pivot on the balls of our feet during execution. This allows us to drive forward with our hips to maximize power. It also prevents torsional stress from building up in our knees and ankles as we execute the technique. I wouldn’t even want to imagine what it would be like to do a roundhouse kick without pivoting on my foot!

When I explained the importance of releasing the base foot to the students in my group, a couple of them were still a bit perplexed. The idea of pivoting seemed somewhat paradoxical to them because they were under the impression that they needed to keep their foot rooted to the floor in order for their technique to be grounded. A little more clarification was required.

Being grounded means keeping your body low and stable as you execute a technique. At the moment of climax, your feet should be rooted, but before that instant, they usually need to release and pivot in order to accommodate your movements. If you keep your feet locked in place during execution, your whole technique will suffer.

To further illustrate this idea, let’s look at some obvious and some not-so-obvious examples of techniques that require a release of the feet.

If you would like learn about some other karate misconceptions, check out my Karate Myths Debunked article.