The title of this blog post is a line from the 2019 dark comedy film The Art of Self-Defense. It’s a pretty good movie, and I recommend it if you like dark comedies. In the movie, the line is meant to be serious advice, but to most viewers it will come across as funny because of the seeming absurdity of it. However, if you understand body mechanics, you’ll know that the concept is actually spot on.
Although kicking with your fists and punching with your feet might seem counterintuitive at first (especially when it comes to kicking), therein lies the key to why the concept works: To strike with real power, you need to focus on the “counter” aspect of the motion/mechanics. Note that this concept is just one of the many principles of counter motion/mechanics that should be applied when striking. But it’s a very powerful one because you’ll let the physics of counterbalance, counterforce, and, depending on the mechanics, counter torque work for you instead of against you, enabling you to deliver a heavier, more accurate strike.
If you don’t believe me, keep your hands at your side and deliver a kick, any kick, on a punching bag or, even better, to a striking pad held by a partner (that way you can get feedback from the receiving end). Then do it by allowing yourself to engage your hands in whichever way you normally would. Unless your normal body mechanics are very off, I’d bet that when you engaged your hands, you had a noticeably more powerful kick. (You can also try the same experiment with a punch, though it’s harder not to engage the feet at all because most punches are thrown while standing up. You could sit and let your feet dangle while throwing a punch. And then do the same punch while standing up.)
So, why does the concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet work? Well, probably the most obvious advantage is that it gives you better balance. And you’ll likely notice that it allows you to get more of your body behind your strike. Those two things alone will give you a dramatic increase in power. But they’re just the beginning. They come from an elementary and mostly passive use of counter mechanics. However, once kicking with your fists and punching with your feet become second nature to you, your nervous system will have undergone a rewiring that will allow you to go even deeper. Although getting to this depth can take time, it’s well worth the effort and patience because then you can start to actively use counter mechanics to increase your power even more by more actively engaging your hips (kwa).
The concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet is not unique to water boxing (Liuhebafa). However, water boxing’s principle that when one thing moves, all things move (and that when one thing stops, all things stop) is actually one of the big reasons I stumbled on the concept and made sense of it. For water boxers, the joints should move together simultaneously or very close to simultaneously. I was practicing throwing sidekicks (which are not part of water boxing’s primary curriculum) on a heavy bag when I observed that my kicks were lacking real power. At first I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized that one of the problems might be that I was violating water boxing’s principle of all joints moving together when I kicked. So I focused on getting my joints to move together while kicking.
In the beginning it felt odd to try to engage all my joints while kicking, especially because the legs are in general much heavier and stronger than the arms. But it soon became clear that a powerful, heavy sidekick is not in the feet/legs but in the hands/arms. Although you may come to this epiphany through a different route than I did, I think you’ll find that “kick with your fists and punch with your feet” is more than just a funny line from a movie—it’s one of the main ways to truly deliver a heavy strike.