How to Find Your Balance While Throwing Kicks

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Coach Charles Martinez:
Hey, what’s up? It’s Coach Chuck. Just give you another drill to work on while you’re at home. So you can use anything. You can use anything that you can use as a base to support your weight. It’s not really supporting your weight, because your weight should be mostly over your center of gravity. So I’m going to find something. I’m going to reach. I’m going to touch, now I’m just going to sit here, leg extended, hand out, head over my center of gravity, and just kind of find that shift.

If I shift to the side of my foot, I start to fall backwards at the end of my kick. Whichever direction my head goes, that’s the direction I fall during the kick. So I raise my leg. I’m not even trying to kick. I’m just raising my leg. Any direction that you lean your head will shift your center of gravity. Then as you try and retract your leg, your feet will set close together, and then they’ll fall backwards. So touch, if your balance, if your head is over the ball of your foot, no problem. You could be up on your heel or you could be more set down, either way. As long as this is a straight line, everything else should be fine.

So using that stop kick to kind of find your balance, switching out, touching, retracting, and then taking that pause out, where even though I’m not hitting hard, I’m just working on shifting my weight, turning my hips. Everything stays up. My hand stays up. My elbow stays close to my body. My other hand goes out. My chin is hidden. My chin is hidden on this side. And then just swinging my leg. So you don’t need a heavy bag to practice all these mechanics, and you can go high on the ball of your foot if you want. But as long as your foot turns out and your heel is able to move, you should be able to rotate your hip.

All right, so just finding any surface to act as a balance point so you can check your balance while you’re standing in your kick.