Roundhouse kick

Mawashi geri (literally: “go-around kick”), the roundhouse kick, traces a large, arcing path towards its target. Because of this, roundhouse kicks look spectacular, and frequently appear in movies and television. Roundhouse kicks were what you pictured yourself doing in your own internal cinema when you decided to learn karate. Don’t lie. However, before indulging your fantasies, you need to take three heaping doses of reality:

• Never perform rear-leg roundhouse kicks. While rear-leg roundhouse kicks are powerful and spectacular, their semicircular paths are, by definition, π-times longer than those of front kicks. As a result, rear-leg roundhouse kicks will take about three times longer to perform than front kicks of equal speed. Rear-leg roundhouse kicks are re impossible not to telegraph, making them the absolute easiest techniques to block. Training to develop speedy techniques can only mitigate the hard limits which geometry imposes; they never be completely eliminated. Since the front leg is closer to the opponent, it travels a shorter path, and takes less time to reach its target.
• Round or circular techniques should never be the first in a series of attacks. Roundhouse kicks work best as follow-up techniques, because of their slightly longer range. A linear technique knocks the opponent back into the roundhouse kicking range.

Like all of our other kicks, roundhouse kicks are a four-point procedure, so be sure to do it by the numbers:

1. Chambering. Enter a walking or fighting crane stance, raising the kicking leg' “past parallel” -- with the knee higher than your hips.
   
   
2. Kick. Open your hip to the outside, like a side kick. Then, simultaneously extend your leg, and turn your knee to the inside. Make this less awkward by pivoting the supporting foot to the outside, like in a side kick. Curl your toes back, so that you strike your opponent with the ball of the foot, just like a front kick.
   
   
3. Re-chambering. Pull your foot back into a walking or fighting crane stance as quickly as possible -- at minimum, twice as fast as the kick went out. This keeps the opponent from catching your kick and using it as a lever to rotate your body. Rechambering from roundhouse kicks is difficult, because they end in an extremely awkward, extended, sideways position. It takes lots of practice before this step becomes smooth. Do not use you kick as part of a giant step.
   
   
4. Stepping out. After kicking, return to a bent-knees attention stance, and slide either leg into whatever stance you chose. Again, never step forward from crane stance into some other stance. You can -- and will -- be swept.

[Roundhouse kick videos, fast and slow, from the front and side.]

While the Goshin-Jutsu roundhouse kick is “the backfist of kicks,” they still pack enough power to crack a man’s ribs.

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