I learned this type of kick some forty years ago in the Kang Duk Won Korean Karate. This was the forerunner of Tae Kwon Do, and the unfortunate truth is that these kicks aren’t practiced anymore. Why, I don’t know, because this type of kick is the hardest kick, the fastest kick I know.

I call this move, no matter what type of technique you do it with, the pop kick. Whether you do a wheel, a side, or a snap, the basic principle remains the same. You replace the right foot with the left foot, and place the right foot on the target…this all has to happen at the same time.

By same time I mean that the right foot and the left foot begin motion at the same time, and the left foot hits the ground at the same time the right foot hits the target. By doing it in this fashion the whole body compacts at the same time, then the whole body expands at the same time. This causes a very pure explosion in the tan tien, which is a point a couple of inches below the navel, which is the energy generator for the body.

In addition to the purity of explosion you will feel in the energy center, you will experience a sudden weight on your standing leg at the same moment you experience weight in the leg you are kicking with. This sudden increase of weight tends to make the explosion of energy very efficient, even as it increases the violence. This will really increase the power of your kick.

If you are executing this move with a snap kick, make sure you get the knee high up so that the foot doesn’t slide up the front of the target, but rather comes in straight. If you are doing a side kick, make sure that the weight of the hips really goes into the target. If you are doing a wheel kick, make sure you get the hips and kick up to a true horizontal plane.

The fourth technique would be a spin pop to the rear, and uses the side kick. You would practice all four kicks against a wall, learning how to lift legs simultaneously, and place the feet on the wall and the ground at the same time. You don’t have to hit the wall with power, save that for a bag, control will actually give you more power in the end.

We used to have all kinds of entry moves to make these kicks work. We would angle our stance as we slapped the attacker’s hands, and the we would do it subtle, and then be in the kick before the target knew what we were doing. As we invested time and sweat the explosion would get more pure and more full of energy.

Make sure you use this technique in a variety of stances, and you will have a much larger arsenal of martial arts weapons. This is a great technique to practice, and it is born of the successful merger of karate power and TKD kicks. Japanese martial arts or Korean martial arts, this is the hardest kick, and the fastest kick, and perhaps the most effective leg technique I know.

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