Came up with a new kick!

This morning, after feeding and watering the animals, I ran through a couple of kata, and chart 1, outside in the grass. It was still nice and cool, with a good cloud cover, and the grass was fresh with dew. It was really nice. I did a few rounds of karate breathing, and then launched into the Seisan kata and did that three times, then did the Seiuchin three times, and after working through chart 1, which is all of our punches and blocks, I focused on a couple of specific exercises that I wanted to improve. Working on this stuff outdoors was different, and very nice. I enjoyed it.

I came in the house, and thought about working on the Naihanchi kata, and I was thinking about the wave-form kick featured in that kata. The Naihanchi stance is narrow, compared to the Seisan or Seiuchin stances, and somewhat pigeon-toed. It is a good fighting stance for a narrow area, or fighting in tight quarters.

The wave-form kick is a low kick thrown from left to right, or right to left, with the kicking foot crossing in front of the standing leg. It's usually thrown to inside of an opponent's knee.

I was messing with this concept, and tried it by passing the kick behind the standing leg. It didn't seem to do much, at first, but then I started it by starting by flexing the knees so I was a little lower, shifting the hip to the side first, and then throwing the kick low. This causes the kick to strike with the heel. Wow! Very powerful!

If it's thrown higher, the strike is with the ball of the foot, but it loses a lot of power. If an opponent was standing to my side and I nailed him in the outside of the knee with this, he wouldn't see it coming. No one expects a kick to come from that angle, and the kicking leg is hidden by the standing leg.

I don't know if this kick is part of some other system, or if someone else has come up with it before, but it's not part of Isshinryu. Can't wait to show this to my Sensei on Monday.

Just finished reading this. It was very good. Richard Kim, "The Weaponless Warriors; An Informal History of Okinawan Karate."