Olympic Taekwondo Round Kick

Jonathan Reff: Hi! Jonathan, here at Somafit; today we are learning about Olympic Taekwondo. In the first technique, what we are going to go over is a roundhouse kick. The roundhouse kick, I am going to teach you in a four simple steps. Olympic Taekwondo is most famous for the power of its kick, the quickness of its kick, the quickness of its sparring and the deceptiveness of the techniques. So I am going to start with my fighting stance. My fighting stance is such that I am going to have about 65:35 weight distribution, meaning that there is more or the majority of my weight is on the front leg. I am on the balls of both of my feet. My hands or my guard is there, my fists are clenched and my spine and body is upright in neutral. Now, as I am moving, I am going to take one step forward and raise my knee. We are going to call that step one. Step two; I am going to rotate on the balls of the weight bearing leg, meaning the leg that I am standing on. Step three; I am going to extend my leg to the target area. I will drop my leg down and then step forward. It'll be a 180 turn, back to where I started from. So again, I am here in my fighting stance.

We are going for step one. The knee goes up rotating for step two; snap the leg out for three, drop the foot down and come on 180 back. Speed it up, it looks like this. Now, when I really speeded up to generate power and make it functional over fighting, it is almost hard, too hard to see the individual steps. These kicks can also go to the head. We will go ahead and raise the target up and so what happens here is as I begin again the exact same as I started for the body kick, my knee is going to come up higher. Wherever the knee goes, the foot is going to end up. So, we are either knocking the wind out of our opponent's stomach and abdomen or knocking our opponent or with the kick to the temple, bridge of the nose or chin and there it is. Now, I am going to show you a third variation on a roundhouse kick, which is actually called a double kick. It involves two roundhouses, while the person executing them, as in here, being me and target is on my opponent; will be, number one; the leg. It could be, number two; the body and number three; the head or upper body. Now, what you want to think of why you are executing this kick is you need to think of your opponent as a ladder and your feet are climbing up that ladder to reach their top target, which essentially should be the head. We are going to put the targets out. My back leg is going to start. Now I am going to try and do my best to show you this slow motion. We are going to step forward again just like the roundhouse; I am going to bring my knee up. I will extend the leg to make contact with the paddle. Now, once my foot goes ahead and come back; once my foot makes contact with the paddle, I have just hit my opponent. He is going to want to move back because human nature is such that we do not actually want to get hit. So, as I make contact, he is moving back. Before my leg touches the ground, I am coming off with the second kick and again that is second roundhouse. So, quickly, it looks like this.

Now, let us try with the second half of the kick, going to the head for a knockout. The only thing that is changing here again is my knee going up higher; and that is how you perform various round houses. The next kick coming up is the Axe Kick.