I have been doing karate for years and have not really thought about this from a beginning students perspective recently. I had a buddy ask me my take on teaching students how to kick the groin as beginners can miss the mark at first. Also (understandably) guys do not want to volunteer their family jewels as target practice!

Ok – one of the first kicks a student learns is the front snap kick in most styles. You bring the knee up, snap the kick out (kicking with the ball of the foot or instep), bring the kick back and land it. This method fast becomes second nature but before a student learns actual sparring (if they style they are learning does that), how is a student to know their kick is going to be a real ball buster? That is the question I’ll deal with in this post.

First for some comic relief Master Ken is going to demonstrate some ways to create more sopranos in the choir.

Boys mostly have no problem with this as they have had their nuts accidentally kicked and know what it feels like. This is not an abstract concept to men and boys. So I am going to mostly deal with girls and women.

Girls could learn how to do groin kicks in a self-defense class, a martial arts class (yes a short term self-defense class does not equal martial arts training), or if they fought a lot growing up – from the school of hard knocks.

Self-defense classes often times have real dummy targets (a padded person) so the women can really feel what it is like to kick something. Sometimes the girls kick into a pad positioned near the groin. The idea of kicking something can increase the women’s confidence that if they actually had to kick someone in the nuts – they could do it.

In a martial arts program, the girls learn many ways of striking the groin with kicks (snap, scoop, heel…), chops, hammer fists, ridge hands and so on. Each technique has its own method to both get into position and deliver the strike. While striking pads are employed many times at the beginning, more advanced students that already have speed, power and accuracy do not always train with pads.

The martial arts students also have the advantage of some good old school sparring (if they are in a semi to full contact school). One word of caution about the type of contact – not all school have contact and many that have contact sparring – do not include groin shots any more. It boggles my mind how a karate school teach sparring without groin shots practiced in sparring as this is on of the most effective self defense strikes!

For the women that learned some fighting skills on the streets – the street is not an ideal teacher. Survival of the fittest and all. So if a girl is aggressive and lucky at first – she can learn how to do many groin strikes but this is not ideal to “learn” in a real fight if she loses! But that being said – many “tough” girls have some real fighting experience way before they ever seek out a martial art.

So now that you know some of the challenges – what is a good effective way to teach women groin strikes?

First while a short-term self-defense training class is better than nothing – I would suggest studying a martial art. I would favor karate or kung fu as they both teach kicks and punches that include groin strikes. Not that the other martial arts are bad – but they are mostly for sport matches in my estimation.

Check out of martial arts schools in your area. Go on a night where they have sparring to see if it looks real or it is more of a game. I mean many karate schools nowadays are pseudo babysitting services. Sure the kids have fun but that seems to be the goal – not achieving fighting prowess. Nothing wrong with having fun but the goal of the school should be turning out good self-defense fighters – not anything else.

Why do I use the term self-defense fighters? Think about it, most students will not be top notch sport competitors (unless this really appeals to them), but they should be able to demonstrate all of the skills they have learned from step sparring or actually free sparring.

What is step sparring? It is where you take some moves you have learned and practice them with a partner. Groin kicks/attacks are a good candidate for this because you can practice the moves slow at half power (assuming a good wrap-around cup is worn) to do many of the attacks that a martial arts school teaches.

What does this work better in a martial arts school over a short-term self-defense class? Repetition of moves as needed is the hallmark of good martial arts training. If a woman does not feel confident with any move – she has to opportunity to work with a partner that can tell her she missed or nailed the target.

Later the free sparring with be useful to attempt the groin kicks from a moving target. So I do not think much of non-contact sparring because the students do not get the feel of a real fight with the speed and timing required to pull any move off – including a good groin kick.

By saying I think sparring should be part of the learning process – I am not endorsing full-contact kick boxing (sparring for most people). That is for the ones that want to go on to sporting contests like Muay Thai or MMA. Both of those contests do not include groin shots though – they are just a sport.

One can learn to fight for self-defense by employing semi-contact sparring (light to the head for upper-belts and medium contact to the body & groin) without risking long-term repeated traumatic brain injury (TBI). So while I endorse semi-contact  sparring (light contact to the head) for self-defense and tournament training – I do not think full-contact, boxing, kick-boxing and such training adds any benefit to the average student and may be dangerous long-term.

Those of you that think point karate sparring (semi-contact) is not realistic or worthwhile or would not work in a real fight, know that I am not coming at this from a theoretical point of view. I have trained this way (before I was a black belt) and while I worked the door – been in about 100 fights without any problems. My point karate was far superior to any fighters I encountered mostly because I was able to hit them without getting hit back (the big deal in point karate).

So to sum up I think when boys and girls are learning martial arts – it is very beneficial for the boys to wear wrap around cups and engage in (half power/speed) step sparring drills with the girls so they can get the striking accuracy, speed and timing down before attempting real sparring. In martial arts school – the instructors have time time to work with students to allow them to develop any needed skills to enhance their self-defense training.