of the foot - how in the hell do you condition your feet for those? if i kick a hard object with a shoe on it's ok, but doing it barefoot...that's something else and it hurts like fucking hell. a shin to the head is something that can be conditioned, but what about the foot to the dome? (seems like you could break many bones in your foot, ESPECIALLY with soccer kicks)
any thoughts?
btw, the thread is about the instep, but i'm also interested in the soccer kicks with the top side of the foot...which seems like broken bones galore with a hard kick
hopefully that kick wins you the fight because the instep IS fragile,hence why it is a valid target for stomping in a clinch,with or without shoes.
ball of the foot,heel or shinbone should be making contact,others will have better advice for you tho,i prefer to kick low line
thanks for the responses. i asked because we all see wand do this over and over again and i'm always asking myself why he never breaks his foot.
but wand is not human
note taken
ha...only jking
hahaha...but i was just...being serious
you got me
When you kick the head with your instep you are supposed to be kicking their neck. The preferred way is to actually kick with the lowest part of your shin bone and wrap your foot to the back of their head. I believe both Peter Aerts and Ernesto Hoost do it like this. Watch some of their fights of KO highlights and check it out.
HNIC,
I won one of my fights like that and even though my feet and shins are highly conditioned, it still hurt. Try and perfect your kicks so that you impact with the shin (heavy bag drills, banana bag, thai pads, etc.) consistently. Other than that condition your feet by kicking the bag bare foot. Don't try and blast the bag-- kick it with light to medium force repeatedly for timed sets. Do this a couple times a week and massage your feet afterwards. You will start to develop tougher feet this way. Then build your intensity over time. This is what worked for me. Hopefully that helps a bit.
I come from a TKD background and as such my insteps are greatly conditioned. They can be conditioned just like any other part of the body. I have scored many a knockdown. Of course it is more fragile than other, larger bones in the body but it can be conditioned to a great degree. I have dropped fighters from off my back with a kick to the chin landing with only my toes.
Conditioning the instep actually increases your reach with kicks.
Peace-
Cam
yeah, I'm a former TKD player myself. Olympic-style TKD allows contact to be made only with feet below the ankle, so round-kicks with the instep was the bread-and-butter kick for TKD competitions. The insteps would get conditioned after a bit of training - required for all those kicks to the hogu (body-protectors). Some of those hogu brands can be pretty darn stiff & hard, and if you can kick them with your insteps hard enough to stop your opponent in his tracks, kicking to a smaller target like the head doesn't hurt the insteps so much, especially since most of the round-kicks would land at the jaw/ear area.
Granted TKD competitors wear helmets which soften the impact on the insteps doing the kicking, but I've been competing since before the helmets were mandatory and it didn't hurt too much to kick heads with insteps - the few times I connected!
Of course, I don't have experience kicking heads a la Silva, so don't know how much of this will translate in a Pride-style situation with an opponent on his knees and you having the chance to practice your soccer-kick on his head!