How to Do a Front Snap Kick in Tae Kwon Do

How to Do a Front Snap Kick in Tae Kwon Do

The very first kick a white belt will learn in Tae Kwon Do is the Front Snap Kick. It's a fairly simple move: shift your weight to the non-kicking leg, lift the other, and snap your foot out. Unfortunately, sometimes what seems simple in theory is actually quite difficult in practice.

What Not to Do

It's important for someone new to Tae Kwon Do to understand how not to perform this kick before ever learning the subtle nuances of how. Why? Because Tae Kwon Do is dangerous if you don't practice it correctly.

The first rule when learning the Front Snap Kick (known as Apcha Busigi, for those whose instructors stress the Korean) is to check your balance before ever trying to throw a kick. It's incredible how quickly you can go from "fairly balanced" with both feet on the floor to being sprawled on your back with your ears ringing. Two of the more common kicks that will put you down if you aren't careful are the Front Snap and Turning Snap, so your first priority with these kicks should always be balance. Usually making sure your stance is right is the first key, if you are in a proper forward walking stand your feet will be set shoulder width apart and you will not be wind-milling your arms in an attempt to keep your footing.

Once you feel confident enough in your footing to attempt the kick, you will want to remember something that you'll only forget once: keep your toes curled back. You never want to strike your target with the tips of your toes, not only is it damaging, it's downright painful. Additionally, if you kick someone by shoving your toes into their stomach, you're probably going to be doing more damage to yourself than you are to them, and that is counter-intuitive to the idea of protecting yourself with Tae Kwon Do.

What to Do

Once you've mastered the two basic rules: get your balance, and keep your toes back, you're ready to attempt perfection of the technique. It's important to remember that "what to do" can be just as important as "what not to do." Why? Again, Tae Kwon Do can be very dangerous to you if you're practicing it incorrectly and you never want to hurt yourself.

First, your back should be kept straight while you're doing your kick. Never allow any wrenching, twisting, or otherwise straining movements to be perpetrated by your upper body. This can do a lot of damage to the spine, especially the lumbar vertebrae, due to pressure exerted the wrong way. Many people who aren't doing the snap correctly tend to twist their whole body to exert enough force to bring their leg up.

This leads to the most important part of the technique. A Front Snap Kick is named as such because of the "snapping" motion you should be doing with your leg. Many people doing the kick incorrectly will jerk their back hard to the side to force their leg up, barely bending their knee, and sort of tapping their foot ineffectively against a target. Just a note: no, that doesn't work. In a real situation you'd quickly find yourself overcome with technique like that. A proper snap kick involves raising the knee to about waist height, and then snapping the foot out. The kicking actually comes from the snap. This means your back, waist, arms, and any other extraneous limbs that sometimes get added in don't belong. You should basically be performing this kick from the knee down.