1. Shortening the Distance From When You're in Your Fighting Stance and Kicking Stance:
The trick comes from your waist to your knees. Many fighters like to do a wide looping roundhouse. Think of a jab...How is a jab executed? STRAIGHT! Why? IT'S THE SHORTEST DISTANCE from point A) Being your fighting stance and point B) Being the point of impact of your attack. So, to do this you must shorten the distance of your kick. How is this possible? The distance is created from your waist to your knee. What you want to do is bring your knee straight forward. From your fighting stance, throw your knee forward as if you were trying a knee strike. THAT'S IT! that is how you "cut the distance". The next thing you need is speed.

2. Speed is the Key to a Stronger Attack:
Speed counts more than strength when it comes to fighting. You want to be the first to make contact before your opponent hits you. How do you kick faster? The speed of your kick comes from your knees down to your toes. It's the snap you want to work on. The "snap" is when you have brought your knee up to your waist and you "snap" your toes out in front of you. And that's all there is for speed.

There's more to a kick than just cutting the distance and speed. You must always remember BALANCE!! You don't want to be the one to throw a kick and have to take an extra second to recover to your stance. By then you would probably get knocked out. Here's the secret. Your "post", or the foot that you stand on to kick, should be directly below your head. Try standing on one foot with the raised knee up to your waist. Now shift your head to one side offline of your standing foot. You lost balance didn't you? As long as you keep your head over your post, you should be able to recover to your stance a lot quicker.

Let me put all these elements together and go step by step on the exectuion of a roundhouse as a whole.

a. You are in your fighting stance, whether short or wide it all depends on your preference. I prefer to stand with my feet at least one and a half shoulder width apart.

b. Lift your kicking knee forward waist high ensuring your head is over the post. From here, if you snap your leg you should easily be able to do a front kick and not fall over and still have your knee up.

c. Rotate your hip to the opposite side of your kicking leg to execute a proper roundhouse. Remember, you are trying to make contact with your instep, which is the area on top of your foot between the top of your ankle and the bridge of the foot.

d. With your hips rotated, your shin should be almost parallel to the ground, or cocked sideways i should say. From here you snap your leg making contact.

e. After you have executed the snap, you can either return your foot back to where it was or drop it in front of you switching your stance.

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