Kicking It

There is, simply put, a right way and wrong way to kick, one virtuous "traditional" and the other nefarious "Superfoot." Traditional uses a whole-body-motion to generate power with the hips, while Superfoot prides itself in "only the foot moving." The Superfoot technique comes from that abomination that is stop-and-go kumite point fighting. The foremost advocate of this was Bill "Superfoot" Wallace:

Consider what this Superfoot technique did to the art of Tae Kwon Do. Before they started using Superfoot kicking, Tae Kwon Do produced fighters with real skill:

But now that Tae Kwon Do has come to rely on Superfoot technique, it has now turned into a pile of silly garbage:

It is interesting to note that Bill Wallace actually lost a testicle kicking that way, exactly as you would guess from watching the first above video. I am not saying Bill Wallace couldn't fight, I am saying that if he had not retired when he did he would have probably lost his other testicle, and I am also saying his Superfoot kicking style did not survive the scrutiny of the global martial arts community:

Notice how that mentions Benny "The Jet", and how he sought out competition in Japan after having fought a Muay Thai fighters. The traditional style of kicking was far older and and more ubiquitous throughout East Asia, and was prominent in China and Japan, not only Thailand:

This is more obvious when observing this type of lead leg kicking technique with the most traditional kick of all, the front kick. Notice how much more similar this is to kicks found in old Karate and Kung Fu forms than the strange antics of the Superfoot technique:

This is another example of why I say Muay Thai is the key to understanding most Traditional Martial Arts.

Update: check out the sequel to this post, Kicking It 2.