This is your bread and butter kick. It can serve as a type of jab, keeping the enemy at bay, letting him know that you do know how to kick and making him think about that. However, it can be a tremendously powerful tool, breaking bones and smashing muscle. 
Spend hours practicing this kick and conditioning your muscles until you can flick this puppy out like a frog's tongue. 


In Hagakure we bend our toes back and strike with the ball of the foot. So if your toes are stiff and it's difficult for you to do that, you'd better be bending your toes back all the time. Pull on them while you're watching TV or sitting at your desk working. Stretch them when you do your daily stretches. 


As keage implies, the principle motion is upward; think crushing his testicles against his pelvic girdle. Don't just swing the leg from the hip like you're kicking a football. Pick the leg up first, lifting the knee, then flick the lower leg out. 

In Hagakure we generally keep our kicks low - say waist height and down. It usually doesn't make any more sense to use a low weapon to kick a high target than it does to use a high weapon to punch a low target. Would you punch a guy in the foot? We use the closest weapon available to the target. 

However, that doesn't mean that we CAN'T kick high. There are times (few and far between) when that actually is the best strategy. It's a good finishing shot when the other guy's arms feel like lead and he's nearly but not quite all the way out. It's a good shot when the guy is shooting in to try to drag you down and his head is lower. It's a great feint while stepping in, closing the distance for a yoko geri or something else. Use it judiciously. Use it tactically. 

Even though this guy's kick slid off to one side, losing a lot of the potential damage, look at the recipient's face. You can see the power of this kick. Look at the extension. Look at the muscle involvement. Look how both hands are still up, protecting his face and ready to strike once the foot comes down. This is a great picture. 

The action is like kicking down a door. The energy line drives in a straight horizontal line through the target. Even though the line is different from keage (which goes up) you still need to get the knee up first then stomp out. If you simply swing the leg up, you'll glance off the guy in an upward and completely ineffective way, leaving your leg exposed to be grabbed and YOUR testicles available for a nice kick! Great job doofus! 

Don't get me wrong. I like yoko geri kekomi, and have used it to good effect many times. It's just that I've personally found it to principally effective against the average joe civilian who doesn't really know how to fight. There's a lot of body movement involved and it telegraphs to other fighters. You can get it to be quick enough that the average civilian doesn't even see it coming, but to the trained eye, that initial hip twist that precedes the sliding of the back foot behind the lead foot is like a big neon sign saying "get the heck out of Dodge!" 

With that caveat, yoko geri kekomi is phenomenally powerful and can actually be done in mid air, knocking down 250 and 300 pound guys. You can knock down doors, break walls and generally be a one-man wrecking crew! Fun! 

Slide your back foot just slightly behind your lead foot, allowing that back foot to turn just slightly so you have a more stable stance once the lead foot kicks out. The principle point of aim is the heel. Extend your arm down your leg, blocking any attempts to slip the shot and counter strike. Do not allow your other hand to extend toward the ground to help balance yourself. Teach yourself to use your leg muscles and momentum to maintain your balance. Keep that hand up and ready to either defend or attack. 

Mae hiza is an in-close, grappling distance strike. Here you see the usual, grab behind the neck in a muay thai clinch and connect his solar plexus to his spine kind of kick. However, don't scorn repeated strikes to the upper thigh either. And if you ever get to slide back while jerking his neck forward and driving your knee up and connect with his chin....? Let's just say I'm smiling at fond memories!

Mae hiza straight can be delivered on the fly, mid air, as a crushing blow to the sternum, or (if you have a phenomenal vertical leap or you're fighting a midget) the clavicle.


By the way, different people have to develop different arsenals depending on their body sizes and the body type they are fighting. I'm short, so though I LIKE mae hiza straight, if I were fighting a guy who was 6'6" or more, it wouldn't be the main weapon I'd use. I'd use the next one more. 

This picture makes it look like the guy is delivering a shin kick to the head, but it's taken slightly after the main shot that was a knee to the head. You can still see the twisting tension of the body. When he landed he was slightly turned away from the already unconscious opponent. 

As cool as the picture and the knockout are, mae hiza side's bread and butter are blows to the knees, upper thighs, and floating ribs. Where mae hiza straight's impact is usually right on the patella, mae hiza side usually lands on the upper knee at the insertion of the vastus medialis and lateralis. So do a lot of squat jumps weight lifting squats to build that area up. 

As the arrow indicates, mikazuki geri is like a slap. You can either use the inner or the outer edge of your foot. The best way to describe it is the way that I've used it the most, as a way of knocking a hand that's extended with a knife in it. 

It's a surprisingly quick kick, once you've built it into your muscle memory, and I've surprised people with it. I would place it as high as this guy and would limit it  mostly to about waist high shots. I HAVE used it once or twice on guys who's "shoot in" I slipped or after I hit them with something else and they were going down. 

I highly recommend it as an inward reap to the back of a knee. It's a great takedown and if you follow through into a stomp, your foot gets jammed behind his knee as you stomp down and it dislocates the patella. He won't be pursuing you. 

Ushiro geri kekomi is basically a mule kick straight back. If you point your kicking foot's toe horizontally, you will tend to turn this into a yoko geri kekomi. That's a nice kick and it may be useful in a fight but it's not ushiro geri kekomi. If THAT'S what you want, then point your toes straight down to the floor or even angle your foot more back to yourself at a 22 degree angle. That makes the shot land on your heel, applying all the pressure to a very small area and giving great penetration. Look back and aim well. Don't just fling it back and hope for the best. Besides, you don't want to miss the look on his face as his solar plexus meets its Maker do you? 

What a shame that I could not find a single good picture of this very useful kick. All I found was this low quality line drawing. I'll try to either take or draw a better picture when I have the time. 

As ushiro says, it's to the rear. As keage implies, it's rising. Imagine a guy grabs your wrists from behind so his buddy can punch you. Snap your foot back and up so that the rear of your heel crushes his testicles against his pelvic girdle. SURPRISE!

Even if the guy steps sideways and covers up the family jewels, its amazing how painful repeated heel kicks to ones shins and inner thighs can be. It's very discouraging, believe you me. 

I also like to use ushiro geri keage in a grappling situation when I've been stupid enough to give up my back and I'm trying to get the guy to shift to one leg so that I can sweep it or hip toss him. I just keep nailing one leg. He'll either move to one side, allowing me to hip toss him, or he'll try to get the leg out of the way, shifting his weight and allowing me to reap him. Either way, it's a good fix to a bad situation. 

Trust me - I love mawashi geri. It's very powerful and delivered with either the ball of the foot or the shin it's devastating. The weakness is that if you deliver the shot shin to shin, you run the risk of breaking your leg. If you try to deliver a shin strike to his quad and he steps back you run the risk of catching the end of your foot on his leg, hyper-extending your shin. 

That's why (though I love a good shin kick as much as the next guy) I highly recommend that you emphasize striking with the ball of your foot. Think of it as "tip of the blade rather than the edge of the blade" kind of thinking. If you land it, it penetrates deep because of the low square inches. If you miss, you just miss and your placed for an ushiro geri kekomi. Only use the shin kick if you are confident of landing it.