High kicks have an arguable use in self defence although they display excellent athletic performance and look great. In combat sports, particularly in full contact ones, many people have adopted techniques that limit kicks level to the waist and below.
Bill “superfoot” Wallace retired in the early eighties as undefeated world champion in the middle weight of full contact kickboxing: his combat strategy was always based on fantastic kicking techniques that often caught by surprise his opponents and knock them KO. Wallace was not just good and superfast in kicking but he could shoot double of triple kicks with a single leg, using these techniques in the same way most boxers faint punching techniques.
In this video he shows some stretching for kicks, one of his legendary training exercises to help improving the central split particularly useful for round, side and hook kick. Please enjoy the view and leave a comment:
Great vid. What do you think about his comment that it is “ok to break a few muscle fibres”?
To put it simplistically we can say that in general muscle fibres get continuosly damaged by exercise and regenerated by rest and proper diet. So my basic rule when stretching is to ensure that the muscle is properly stretched without ever reaching the pain level.
Discomfort is fine but if you start experiencing pain you went too far and you should stop and go back to the point when it was not hurting.