Japanese Sensei Explains Why Your Kicks Are Weaker by Chambering Fast 

I'd also like to say that the reason why we get into the habit of chambering is because that's how we get taught as lower ranks to get the knee up to kick. As one progresses through their studies, they must realize how to make their movements more efficient.

I'm 23 and have my first Karate class tomorrow, I'm so excited

One thing i learned from mr Scott Adkins (granted, he's Taekwondo, not Karate) and Steven Wonderboy Thompson, is that they get rid of the chambering process entirely when throwing their sidekicks. It's fast, non telegraph and strong as hell. It's always more powerful to push from the floor and straight forward into the target, chambering up means you just wasted all that power from pushing the floor

Chambering is like the starter lines on drawn picture. You start learning to draw by drawing lines, axises and circles then adding details. At the highest level you're good enough to imagine them so your strokes become more precise and confident. The picture is born in a stroke.

I love how you illustrated the concept with the bottle, thanks so much!

Chambering is tactical. Not for power. You use your knee motion as dummy. Both technique have their use. I love practicing both.

This is a very good way to explain the momentum of the kick/strike 😊 💪🏻🇬🇧

Yes. Great explanation.

Great teaching- appreciate it. I can see your Okinawan training coming through.

These conceptual videos on kinetics are critical to developing the art in a future direction. I'm happy to see lessons from cross training being applied to improve and refine traditional training to make it more efficient and dynamic in modern practical application.

Thank you, well done!!!

Thank you for another great lesson.

So glad you doing these series. I'm still figuring out not to use tension. I'm understanding it a lot better now. Just have to put it into practice

Thank you for good videos:)

Thank you! This is a different perspective on a principle I already taught. Your vid has helped me get a deeper understanding on how to kick so I can teach and train it better!

Today i found your channel and I"m subscribing 👍

One of the best explanations of how inertia and mass work

THANK YOU

Been doing karate for 20 years. This is a great drill and I like it! Make more videos!

Thank you.

Understood Sensei. Thanks!

lol, this was difficult to explain with the bottle, but at the same time, it worked perfectly. Thank You!

Brilliant pedagogy, I really admire someone with skills to teach by using analogies that really helps - not making it more complicated as some may do to. I am a phil/psych teacher myself. Karate!! Osu!!

Makes total sense.

Good tutorial.

Thanks you

Well said.

Feelings about heaviness can be misleading. Use a dynamometer to check what is really the most effective way of delivering a stricking technique.

Great 😊

I use both versions of kicking. I call the first version the static version. It is used for beginners. The reason is, that the beginners have to learn to do kicks with high knees. The other version is the dynamic version of kicks. This is the standard version in my karate. Mae geri etc. is simply to teach this way. Yoko geri kekomi is the most difficult technik for to do it this way.

Learned along time ago from my late sensei to kick like a whip. When u get the sensation, it almost gets dangerous to your knee. As the feet gets so fast, the energy goes so strong that a weak knee feels and sometimes hurt!!!

It also depends of the type of impact you want/desire on the target. Even a swinging or slapping (Ax kick, crescent kick, rising kick) type of kick is enhanced by a proper/appropriate chamber "if you know what you are doing". Keep in mind, distance from the target; plane of the target (high, mid, low), speed needed (all kicks don't have to be fast and "showy" just effective) and what degree of deception might be warranted.

oh you back

The bottle demonstration is good for explaining knee blocks. If you time them right, the weight moves up to power the block. But if you time it to early, the weight will descend back to the foot by the time the strike lands and the block isn't so good.

Fluidity of motion is key.

Thank you, sensei!

Yea I do agree with the first comment. When we are thought at basic level we are thought to chamber the knee. It’s easier to teach or instruct that way when you are instructing a class and that is where the habit comes from Aldo by chambering the knee you are more likely over time to damage the knee. The way that you explain it makes more sense and I would no ware on the knee. Great work keep it up looking forward to your channel next time, thank you for the advice.

I like how you use the bottle. And for the punches also. For power, as they say, you have to get something "behind" your punches or kicks. You have to get some mass behind it. Like hitting them with a 50 pound (23kg) sand bag. Sand bag makes contact and keeps going.

HELLO SENSI ! I ALWAYS BE WAITING ❤

Its incredible!A Shotokan sensei saying this!More than 40 years ago we were painful punished for not chambering kicks in karate class.Then I discover kung fu,Muay Thsi(back then Thai boxing)and my kicks become stronger and scoring without the Jka chambering.

This is excellent! Your use of a wine bottle really helps to see the weight distribution.

Great reference to attaining more power from individual kicks for sure, I teach after the 1st kick when your good enough to chamber the kick back so you can kick a second or 3 time without putting your foot down, using the first or second to Faint/baulk and execute the last more meaning fully, very difficult to do, but with practice you can achieve alot. A defender doesn't know which kick to look out for, it won't be as strong as an individual kick would be of course but still strong enough to knock someone back, break a rib, the knee joint, knock them out, those kicks require precision not necessarily the most power.

I really like the look of your punch/kick bag. What brand is it and where can I get one like it?

This is very true. I train in Aichi, with JKA. I often assist the younger ones on their kicks, teaching them that yes, it's important to chamber as you learn BUT... as they get better, I expect a more fluid motion. As they continually improve, they must learn to fluidly push forward THROUGH their target. The chamber should be aimed at their target, no longer up. Chambering your kicks "sharply" ends up just touching your target. No real power. Hip movement is vitally important when chambering "forward" into a fluid kick. Often times the kicks end up brushing the target too similarly like "painting the fence". If you've seen Karate Kid, you know what I mean LOL.

Excellent content and materials technique is only as good as the man who's confident as the man is the art no matter which technique it is it has to be understood that it will end the same way that it begins if it's a sidekick will there be spinning jumping low sweeping it still will end the way it's supposed to sound same thing with the round kick stray kicks with all the technique always believe in yourself and don't waste time with this or that and just do very good keep up the excellent work fighting is all about reading the enemy waiting for the right moment to fight offensive & defensive as one any position being at all times not fearing not fearing life brilliant

With all due respect, the bottle lost me. So, just in case I'm not the only one, I will offer an explanation that I learned years ago from a former Sensei. Chambering limits the power produced by only extending from the knee after the momentum from raising the knee has been wasted. Extending from the knee while simultaneously raising it, compounds the power by using the momentum generated by the hip and the knee together. If you understand the physics behind the snap of a whip, you can apply the same physics to make a kick more powerful.

The Thai style roundhouse changed my life. No rigidity and no chamber. I tried to relearn karate roundhouse but I lost the dexterity. It is much stiffer and your video explains why.

Great analogy with the bottle! I'd also add that the higher level technique is to replicate a water hammer principle in your strikes. It's the way to generate the most devastating power.

When doing kicks I've noticed pain in my pelvic muscles what can make it disappear while on mawashi geri

Chambering and stopping was taught for beginners to see what the process looks like. I think most higher belts do not stop at chambering... it becomes a fluid motion like you are saying.

As a physical therapist and martial artist I don't think I can get on board with this model. Your musculature is not liquid in a vessel it's tissue that experiences stretch and tension. The faster I flex at my hip and knee the more tension I put into that structure that wants to return to a resting position. With good timing you extend the knee USING that tension you've put into chambering and get a stronger kick as a result. If you watch people jump you get the idea. I'm just some schmoe on RU-vid at an odd hour. I hope your channel grows as you obviously care about improving. Peace

I've been doing it like this for years.

Had very similar instruction from Shihan Kiyoshi Arakaki about 10 years ago during a two day Okinawa Karate-Do Muso-Kai seminar. Talk about a leg and lat workout!!!

Nice explanation, cant really follow the bottle and water idea though. (I have 35 yrs TKD behind me) - the physical explanation is that if you chamber early, you are no longer using your upper leg muscles and core muscles to move your leg at the moment of impact. Just your quad. with almost any impact, hand, elbow, knee, foot, at the moment of impact all the muscles (in particular the big ones!) should be in play at the last range of their motion.

i like our vidoes i am hero now think for teaching

Other than being a teaching device, the whole point of chambering prior to launching the kick is that then we can launch different kicks and the opponent doesn't know which one. I chamber in front, I can do a snap kick, thrust, round house high, medium, low. I chamber on my side, I can still do round house or do side kick. It is both a mind game and something giving me time to decide. Sure, it is harder to see if you're just snapping out a kick quickly without chambering but *if* they can see it then they know exactly which kick you're doing. Still though if you don't talk about the reason why chambering can be useful and you're giving nonsense analogies with the bottle (which just isn't actually how biomechanics works) then it makes your advice which is correct seem incorrect. I'm no expert or blackbelt.. just a keyboard warrior but I used to know a lot about kicking and what you're saying here if you don't add some nuance to it.. it's wrong without the nuance or at the very least misleading.

Does that apply to kekomi variants?

Then why are kicks from kyokushin guys so powerful?? They chamber the kick all the time

It Karate, thanks to the Japanese influence, and larger classes, everything was done by the count and each move was broken down. This is a problem we need to recognize. We need to get back to a count being a full execution of a technique rather then each little move. I hope this makes sense.

I'm not a teacher but from experience I think chambering helps achieve balance and strength but in time finding a middle ground is a good thing to have but great thought and video

The kick you’re show is the same exact kick Anderson Silva and lyoto machida used to knock people out in the UFC it’s so fast and up the middle you just explained how to get all that power behind it thanks

I find stationary kick drills helped me break the chambering habit. As I start moving the leg back and forth I got into a swinging motion instead of a lifting motion. Idk, maybe worth trying for yourself.

What about the mawashi geri? I believe, the chambering is basic kihon for this kick as well ?

It's only with years of experience that you realise that some of the stuff you have been shown is wrong and you realise that the trick to it is using a whipping technique, relaxation is the secret

That is how you move the heavyness of you body when you kick, THIS is part of the 3 cardinal points on Funakoshi's book THE MASTER TEXT.

In Shotokan, they taught us to always chamber our kicks. Now, you want us to undo what we’ve been taught?

"What's your favorite training tool" Me after watching Nagano-sensei's videos: Water bottle

The power is also in the hip not just the weight from the foot

there's probably an argument to be made for not chambering, but this is not a good analogy toward that end. you're muscles do not act like a fluid inside a bottle. to generate force, they get shorter. for the front kick, it's going to be mostly the knee extensors and some hip flexors depending on how you execute. if not chambering allows you to add speed without a net loss in contractile force in the involved muscles, it will add power. this is beyond my expertise, but i imagine it varies between individuals and heavily depends on what you're more practiced with. i do have some understanding of the musculoskeletal system and it's not a fluid subject to inertia within a container. i'm fine with taking some liberties with lose analogies as a teaching tool, but this is so far removed from how the body actually works it bothered me enough to comment. the argument for chambering, strictly from a biomechanical standpoint, would be that putting any muscle on a stretch before contracting it will allow it to generate more force. [edit] ... this is probably unnecessary, but since i mentioned the hip flexors earlier ... if you were to chamber a front kick, the hip flexors would be put on slack, but you would now have both the knee extensors and the hip extensors on stretch to generate a lot of force for a push kick. if you wanted to get the most out of the hip flexors, they would be put on stretch into hip extension exactly the way football kickers do. i appreciate that there are variations of the front kick that are somewhere between these two extremes, and that a whipping motion may be a viable strategy over chambering, but my main issue was with the analogy itself. a whip would actually be a better analogy.

I suggest you to make a research about biomechanics of a kick. It will probably save your time improving your technique.

Interesting way of explaining how to kick properly, One thing I am a little bit surprised is that you didn’t explain how to put your hip into the kicks when kicking for power. I trained in the old school traditional Taekwondo so it’s very similar to karate and when I teach my students I would always teach them to put their hips into their kick. But overall I like your analogy with the bottle that’s a good one!!!

Interesting. However I don't normally chamber my kicks I chamber the punches. My master told me to be light on the legs like you did, but when it comes to punching he says it's better to chamber. Why is that? Because when you punch you have a power generator, traditional boxing uses the shoulder as their generator but when you punch from your hip it is a better generator. His explanation.

Something eles you know we are in the year of the dragon And i wondering was the Enter of the Dragon was made of the same year like the year of the dragon?

Hello from algeria and OSS

The only two reasons I know anyone chambers and holds is for understanding kick flow with drills and there are kata that require you to hold the chamber. When kicking for self defense or sparring you never stop at the top of a chamber. But if you go to the extreme of not chambering the kick will never have height without being a stretch kick. The foot follows the knee in the kicks you showed and when your knee was low so was your kick. If someone is not understanding the fluidity of chambering and kicking that’s a teaching point but to say do not chamber is a mistake that will only cause you more problems. How to fix your chamber or your chamber is wrong would be a better title as you did not stop chambering on your kicks you just did not hold the chamber.

My English is horrible anyway so I don't think anybody is even understanding what I'm trying to say. But I love your videos and I watch them all the time

I'm certain there aren't many women my age who can, or would want to lift their knee to shoulder height and balance on one leg but there are certainly many women my age who fall and break their hip! Obviously this video is aimed at fast delivery of kicks but there's more to karate training than fighting. Strength, fitness, co-ordination, balance, stamina, respect, spirit, confidence, determination and, of course, fun, enjoyment and friendship.

Be water my friend.

Interesting, one of the Tai Chi sayings is: "keep the weight underside" I suppose that for getting a strong base, the opposite of what you are saying is valid, so keep the water inn the bottom of the bottle to be firm? Cheers

I noticed this while doing Ura Mawashi geri. The difference is huge. PS: Steven Seagal was right all along. 😁

chambering is still an affective technique contrary to the context and situation its being used.

"Be like Water" 💦🤔😂

It halves the power because it uses half the leg

This was the same principle Steven Segal Sensei has been explaining. Unfortunately many ignorant keyboard warriors were spewing their ignorance...

But that’s how you’re *supposed* to kick. You’re still chambering.

I wonder if old-school Shotokan was more about Power? I love the 'stiffness' of Shotokan Karate because it teaches Power control, so if you can learn both Stiff and Relaxed, you will be more in touch with your body.

Sensei wine bottle karate. It works, so itz good instruction. Where youre saying direct all the energy to the foot to the target instead of loosing energy going up through the knee vertical, correct?

Hello my Freind You header on the video is incorrect . what your heading should say is relaxation vs tension. You are explaining this technical principle, which is one of twenty five technical principles taught by Joe Lewis , in the late 70s and early 80s. This is not really about chambering your kicks. It could be applied to any technique. There are many great fighters who learn this principle through repetition and fighting, but very few who can also convey this principle. I liked your bottle explanation as a visual aid here in the days of the internet. Keep your mind open. There are many things that you will learn over the years with an open mind. Chuck Cohen

Be wine my friend!

Mr. Nagano risks getting ex-communicated from the Shotokan fraternity by teaching these techniques. This is pure authentic Wado-Ryu as promoted by the founder Master Hironori Otsuka and his No.1 disciple Tatsuo Suzuki Hanshi. And of course it works wonders!

Sensei, why do Korean kicks look so much faster and explosive?? That has been my observation as a Shito-Ryu stylist.

Careful Sensei Yusuke...you're turning into a ☯️ kung-fu person with all this non-chambering fluidity...😀

So basically we have to kick like soccer players-

I completely understand your concept but I would have to disagree cast to the type of kick you are down putting is it fully being done correctly you are demonstrating as Kata version who doesn't give Justice. I do agree with what you're saying as far as what you are demonstrating. But I would disagree with the physics if the kick is done correctly that supposed to be. Just my thought but I'm nobody important to be saying so

Do one rounded movement instead of two straight ones....guess that's what you mean:D

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Is THIS "correct" Physics? Water, Gravity, Speed, Enertia, comparing to the Brain to muscles and nerves?

What about the hips? Where do they enter?

Gung Fu 🍼☯️

Be like water.