When I was a young man I had a wicked double front kick (mae tobi geri), but now the only high kick is a roundhouse that starts out like a front snap kick, because they're not expecting it from an older guy like me. And I only throw reverse kicks occasionally at kyus just to show them what is possible.

I teach high and jumping kicks. I think that high round kicks can be extremely effective but they do take practice. Mostly it depends on the student I teach them to kick any level and they find what works best for them. We allow throws and sweeps in most of our sparring so you only high if you know you can do it. I still think that a front kick to the gut works best.

In the olden days when I did TKD, there was a lot of emphasis on getting a variety of higher and jumping kicks. I liked doing them for conditioning. I never thought they were practical for any real fighting. I think they found their way into the repertoire because younger students, say in the 8-20 age range, will find them anyway and want to do them just because they are there. They are fun and take a lot of energy.

Now I seldom kick higher than the ribs. I use them also for the surprise value. People expect me to kick to the legs, and I do that often. I hand strike to the head, for me, is just faster and far more accurate, and in the practice setting, safer. God help the person I actually land a head kick to.

This is a subject that, for me, is always fun to talk about. Now that I'm in my mid 40's, with 26 years of study, I have been able to truly embrace my base Okinawan style's strategy of closing distance and keeping kicks at waist level or below. While I still kick to the head while sparring or kickboxing, when I'm really working on self defense (aka kata bukai) all kicks are low.

When I close the distance with my opponent, the need for and practical use of high kicks is eliminated (especially since my knees no longer react well to jump and/or spinning techniques). The exciting thing is that when you stop looking up for a target (i.e. head) and look from the pelvis down, you find targets that are especially debilitating to your opponent. Additionally, by staying in close I find that my opponents ability to kick high on me (spinning or otherwise) is greatly reduced unless the person is an exceptionally gifted fighter.