It's a Muay Thai flexibility thread, specifically. Spinning roundhouse kicks can be thrown in Muay Thai. I've thrown them on numerous occasions and seen them thrown on numerous occasions. We actually practiced them on warm ups every session. I personally prefer bending the leg slightly to get more whip on the end of it. Also you'll find if you start wide from the hip the leg can tend to bend also. The point of the photo was to answer the question if I could still kick at head height. It answered the question. The style of the kick absolutely doesn't matter. You're arguing for the sake of arguing here. If you want to see me throw standard Thai roundhouse kicks at head height I have a few Muay Thai interclub and fight videos on MAP. Feel free to watch them. I'm sure you'll find a few head kicks thrown in here and there for your viewing pleasure. Here's a few more photos I found. Left switch kick. Side stepping right roundhouse. Right spinning roundhouse with stiff leg. It's important to note here that I compete in Full Contact Kickboxing, Muay Thai & K1 Rules Kickboxing, and have trained under credible instructors, within the UK, in all three arts. So my understanding of the kicking techniques is, in general, pretty good. This is simply not true at all. You can learn good technique and form by learning to kick at body or leg height and build up to head height as you become more flexible. You don't need to be flexible to learn to pivot on the foot or move the arms correctly, etc. You do need an understanding of body mechanics however, which generally comes within time of training for those that don't pick it up straight away. Watched one of Jordan Watson's fights a couple of days ago where he pulled this off in the most cheekiest of manners. So cheeky in fact even his opponent was laughing and touched gloves out of respect for it.
The reason I asked was out of curiousity, since it's a kick we do as well. If I hadn't done it myself I wouldn't comment on it.
I will put up a photo or two of me performing kicks head high in jeans, if a buddy of mine is able to capture it with a camera. Or we can film it and you can see the speed. No promises, but I will see what I can do.
