How do I make a Front Thrust Kick Work?

Ever since one of my first tournaments I’ve had a great respect for a front thrust kick. I had been to several tournaments and took my lumps and worked hard at figuring out how the game worked and was getting pretty confident in my sparring. I was competing and was having a good day. I beaten my former nemesis who I had never beaten before by a score of 3-0 and my confidence soared. I walked through the division and was fighting for first place and was up against another shotokan stylist. True to a shotokan stylists repertoire he blocked well and used the defensive reverse punch with great skill and at the end of the match we were tied at 2-2. We moved around analyzing each other for a few moments and when I paused and he launched a front thrust kick at me. I wasn’t too concerned, I’ve blocked hundreds of those, I thought. I’ll just block it and counter attack. Unfortunately, he believed in his kick because my down block simply bounced off on his shin and his kick continued on to its target. I couldn’t believe what just happen, but I certainly added that to my To Do List.
I remember a great expression from Star Trek Next Generation, “Make it So”. Yep, Make it so or make it happen.
As I stated that in one of my earlier articles, “If you believe it, then you can achieve it”.
I remember when I was working with a young Black Belt and I demonstrated the effectiveness of a front thrust kick. I had been blocking his front kicks with regularity. I stopped sparring with him and told him to block my kick. I kicked at him several times each time telling him to block it, which he did with great skill. Then after several times of performing this routine I said block this and performed the kick basically the same but with a mental change. My young students arm bounced off of my leg and the kick landed square in his midsection and he went skidding across the floor on his behind. Of course the expression on his face was one of disbelief. The change was mostly an attitude shift, I thought, “you can not block this”. Of course technique had something to do with this also but the main emphasis was on belief! I then said do you want to learn how to do that. He said yes! I said then change you mindset and it will work. Often in sparring we get comfortable and we play nice and don’t want to hurt the other person so we let them block our leg because we don’t want to kick them that hard. If you think about the power in our legs, it should be almost impossible to block a kick ever. Your legs are astronomically stronger than your arms. So what sometimes happened is we get conditioned to the belief that our kicks are block-able instead of the other way around.
To get that mindset one must think to themselves you can not block this. Bring you focus into play. Envision you kick being powerful and landing on its target and then use proper technique and drill it in!
Once in a tournament, I intended to land a hard front thrust on an opponent. I thought I had focused hard enough and believed in would land and had enough power and said to myself, “you can not block this”. He blocked it! Hmmmm? Then I thought to myself, Well if you think that was something then you’ll never block this one. I summed up all the confidence I had in my kicked launched a kick that I knew would work and I blew right threw his block and knocked him down. Ei-yaai!
On the technique end of the issue, a good front thrust must not only be thrown with commitment of mind but body too! You must get your body in the proper alignment, with the drive leg nearly in alignment with the kicking leg. When you are in this alignment there is no turning back. (Commitment). Your hip must also be tilted back to help drive the kick and at the same time give you more reach. Keep your body upright and you don’t want to lean much because this will through the weight backward lessening your drive and balance. Making sure you are at the proper distance is very important also but this comes with much practice. If you get good at the front thrust kick you will be surprised at the distance that you can kick from. Tilting your hips will extend the distance allowing you to kick from what seem to be an unreachable distance!
Practice this awesome kick from the shotokan arsenal and make that kick unstoppable. It will become one of your favorite weapons!
Now Go Believe and Achieve!
Written by Sensei Perry Culver (Sixth Dan Shotokan, 1st Dan Syu Sin Do)