The front kick—either a front snap kick or front thrust kick—is usually the first kick you learn to throw in the martial arts… but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it better!
Here’s a challenging exercise that will not only help you add more speed and power to your front kick, it’ll also make it harder to see coming! Let me know if it helps! 🙂
How to Front Kick with More Speed and Power!
I call this exercise the “Free Fall Front Kick Drill”. Here’s why…
You know when you climb to the top of a roller coaster—CLACK CLACK CLACK—and then drop into a free fall? You feel your stomach drop and worry you might puke? Well, if you do this exercise right, you’ll get the same feeling! So, grab a bucket! 🙂
The challenge is simply to kick with your front front without shifting your weight to the back foot.
To get the idea, start by putting your feet close together, one in front of the other. Now lift your front foot, kick it out, and put it down before you fall to the side.
Feel that? Now make your stance a little wider and try again. This is not easy!
Two details to point out…
First, only use the front foot to practice this drill. Why? Because kicking with the back foot is much easier than the front foot.
When you kick with the back foot, you can’t cheat and shift backwards. Kicking with the back foot means you’re shifting your weight forwards, which is the same direction as you’re kicking. That means less wasted energy.
The front foot is a trickier challenge, because it’s natural to cheat. You’ll see martial artists standing up and leaning back to make their front foot easier to move. Don’t do that!
Instead, get that foot out and back without moving anything else—your head, hands, or body. That’s how you create the feeling of the free fall. It’s just like you’re knocking the leg off of a table.
Second point—don’t get crazy and try kicking at head height. The safer idea is to kick as high as you can without hurting yourself. That can be waist height, knee height, or even ankle height.
Seriously— if you have issues with your knees or ankles, stop right here. Don’t go on to the next part!
The next part…
If you want to make the free fall even scarier, start off in a front stance or bow and arrow stance. When your center of gravity is down that low and your back leg is locked, there is no way you can cheat!
To make sure you’re doing it right, here’s a visualization to keep in mind—pretend that both of your legs are stuck in mud up to your knees.
Leaning and shifting won’t help you if you’re stuck in mud. All you can do is pull your foot straight up and kick it forward.
So, imagine that you’re yanking your foot out of a hole, then flinging the mud on to the bad guy’s pants.
Try it!
If you want an even tougher challenge, I’ve got one more for you. Try to throw your front kick standing on one foot.
No, not the foot dangling in the air… the foot on the ground!
This exercise is 100% pure free fall. I can’t kick any higher than the ankle! Can you?
The Free Fall Front Kick Workout
If you want to torture yourself, try this simple routine…
Do four sets of 10 kicks on each leg. For the first set, set your feet close together. Second set, widen out into a fighting stance. Third set, drop into a front stance. Fourth set, balance on one foot.
I don’t care who you are, if you do that routine, you’re going to feel it!
Why am I doing this?
Let’s talk about why this exercise is important. If you shift your weight back to kick with the front foot, your foot will actually travel backwards… away from the target! I don’t like that for the same reason I don’t like winding up a punch.
Pulling the front foot back makes the kick slower because you’re adding distance to the delivery. Even worse, you’re making it easy to see the kick coming. Especially, if you stand up or lean back!
No, I’m not saying you should never lean back, I’m saying you should never lean back without a reason!
If you lean back to take your head out of punching range, fine! If you pull back to draw your attacker closer to you, fine! But if you’re leaning or pulling back just to make your leg feel lighter, then fix that bad habit.
By the way, the same philosophy applies to punches, too. Watch How to Land More Punches here.
I should point out that many kicking styles, like Muay Thai or Olympic Taekwondo, use a narrow stance. Typically, they keep their feet close together and stand tall. You might also see some kickboxers jumping around and rapidly switching their feet.
That’s all good! Those folks sure know how to kick!
A tall, narrow stance makes it easier to hide weight shifting. Jumping and switching your feet makes your leg feel lighter, which helps you move your foot faster. I have no problem with any of that…
…but why limit yourself?
Personally, I want to be able to kick with either leg from any position, high or low. Especially when it comes to self-defense situations, I want to be ready for anything!
Besides, even if I never need to throw a front kick from a low stance, training to do it is still a great workout and builds good fighting habits.
So, add the Freefall Front Kick Drill to your workout… just don’t hurt yourself! Always warm up and always start with your feet close together. When you’re ready to kick it up a notch, widen your feet little by little.
One more thing—if you can front kick at belt height off of one foot, don’t tell me… my ego can’t handle that!
