Front Thrust Kick

         In last night's class we went over the from thrust kick and did a few exercises to work on it.  Pretty simple kick right?  Get into a nice crane, thrust from the hip, straight out towards your target line with your toes pulled back, and then back into a nice lovely crane stance before stepping back down with control.  Simple?  Here is the thing, I knew before we even started the lesson that my issue with this kick was my recovery after the kick was delivered.  I tend to lose strength in my hip flexors, so my kick is not returning to the original crane; and sometimes I let the leg fall altogether if I'm tired after throwing 'x' amount of kicks.  What I didn't realize is how bad that return was until we did the hoop exercise where we had to kick through the hoop and get the foot back through without touching the sides.  I think maybe 1 kick out of all the kicks we did, I managed to deliver and pull back my foot without hitting he sides, but the majority hit, especially when pulling back.  

        It gave me a whole new appreciation to this 'simple' kick.  Again, I knew that I had the issue with returning my kick back to a better crane, and it is something I was working on before last night's class, but I have a long way to go.  I am happy with the line my kick though.  I feel like I am getting that thrust from the hip and my leg is going straight towards the target and not swinging up.  By no means is it perfect, but I feel I at least have a handle on that aspect.  So back to getting those 50,000 reps, and not just any rep, good, as close to perfection reps.