Style Comparison: Which Way To Move Your Hips For Leading Hand Techniques

Karate girl doing knife hand blockWhen it comes to leading hand techniques, different styles move their hips/waist in different ways for certain leading hand techniques.  In particular, techniques that are part circular where the hand moves from the opposite side of the body to it’s own side (such as Downward Block, Back-Fist Strike, etc).

Some styles such as my main style of Shotokan Karate push the lead hip forward with the technique (as you would a jab), whilst others (notably Taekwondo/Tang Soo Do) rotate the hips in the same direction as the hand (hips move as you would with a reverse punch).  Both ways have different advantages and disadvantages and I wouldn’t say one way is better than the other.  In this video, I compare some of the differences.  I do however focus a bit more on the Shotokan Karate way of moving the hips as obviously it is the mechanism that I know better having trained it for so many years.

Please leave your feedback below as to how your own style performs these movements.

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