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Compared to Karate, Kickboxing is a very young style of martial arts in which the focus is rather on pointfighting (Kumite). Only in 1974 Kickboxing was accepted as a competitive sport. At that time it was still called ‘All Style Karate’ and should enable the fighters of all styles of martial art from the far east to compete against each other. Since there where slightly different rules in each of the styles they introduced uniform rules for the competitions.

Nowadays it is distinguished between three different types of Kickboxing:

• Semi-contact

• Light-contact

• Full-contact

In Semi-contact there is usually no body contact within the fights but it is shown when a kick or a punch would reach its target. Nonetheless there are little contacts every now and then. If a clean technique is performed towards the body of the opponent the referee stops the fight and gives points. The winner is the fighter who gains more points after two minutes. In some tournaments or championships the fight might be finished before the time is over if one of the fighters is five points ahead.

In full contact the punches and kicks are performed with full power and there are no stops during the fights to give points. The referees make notes about the points and proclaim the final result after the fight. But the fight will be finished if one of the fighters is knocked out.

Light-contact is in between semi- and full-contact. As well as in full-contact there are no stops to signalize the points but the referees write them down and announces the winner after the fight. In light-contact the punches and kicks are not performed with full power. For that reason it is not possible to get a knock out. Nonetheless the strength of the body contacts is much harder than in semi-contact.

In the beginning Kickboxing is exclusively taught as semi-contact in our club. The reason for this is that we want our students to get a very good control over their body. If a student once has the ability to stop a punch or a kick right in front of the partner’s or the opponent’s body it is not hard any more to use full power and therefore go into full-contact. Besides getting a much better body-control we also can prevent our students from injuries or at least minimize them. In any case the students should have fun and be able to go on with the training.