Kicks like a mule

Another good night for the Derby classes, the people we have coming at the moment are a real pleasure to teach - and some of them have obviously been practising between lessons which is a very good sign.

We also had a mother and daughter turn up to check out the kung fu with an eye to joining next week - I hope they liked what they saw, as we could do with a few more girls in the classes.

Talking with D after we tried to dissect my side kick, which I'm still not really happy with even after all this time; while I have come to accept it will never be as impressively high as I'd like, I still think it lacks a bit of power most of the time, with the exception of my wing chun sidekick, which is more downwards than outwards in direction, and which feels, to me at least, like it could do some real damage if it connected with someone's knee or ankle. I think the problem is with the angle of my thigh/knee in the drawback before the kick, so I need to carefully observe some of the kickers that I admire to see exactly how they do it.

Happily I do have something in common with the guy doing the kicking in these pictures - I have the same sort of shoes...