Introducing Knee Strikes to Kickboxing Personal Training

09.02.2026

Kickboxing Personal Training

My client began the seventh hour his Kickboxing Personal Training class. In this lesson I introduced him to the spear knee strike. This is the final weapon of his Kickboxing arsenal, as permitted in such versions of the sport as Dutch and Japanese Kickboxing. With clinch being very limited in these sports, there is a lot of skill required to land good knee strikes from the outside range.

Kickboxing training session focuses on powerful knee strike techniques.

Drilling the Spear Knee Strike

After our dynamic stretching and sport-specific muscle activation exercises, we did some line-work to go through the basic mechanics of delivering a spear knee strike. We trained the technique first on the spot as a type dynamic stretch and muscle activation exercise, ensuring that the gluteus muscles are fired at the beginning of the strike and that calf muscle is properly extended by rising up on the ball of the supporting foot. Then we moved onto marching knees across the gym, making sure the tip of the knee strike comes in at a slight angle. This shouldn't be confused with the angled or diagonal knee strike. The straight knee has a slight angle upon impact to ensure it lands on the centre of target.

There are three basic executions.

Long Knee - This straight knee is the longest range grounded knee strike. Bicycle knee, knee bomb and flying knee strike are all airborne variations of this strike. The technique is delivered by stiff-arming the opposite side to the knee strike to parry the opponent's guard and for protection before being replaced by the driving knee.

Helmeted Knee Strike - The straight knee is delivered at a closer range with the kickboxer forming a shelled guard for close range protection.

Push and Pull Knee Strike - Perhaps the classic spear knee strike, this is set up by using a collar tie and an arm-trap.

I then went through some simple defences: posting, parrying and cross-blocking.

Structured Rounds

Specific Sparring

We then moved onto live practice. I used a series of specific sparring rounds to train attack and defence.

Round 1 - One-for-one knee strikes. This is a great way to get on the move and place knee strikes. We didn't drill any defences, but just used touch contact. It was important to promote flow and for my client to work out angles against a moving target.

Round 2 - Knee strike sparring. Again, we kept the level of contact low, but now made it live and allowed defences.

Rounds 3 and 4 - Boxing versus knee strikes. The boxer worked to keep distance whereas the knee-striker needed to cut off the ring.

Rounds 5 and 6 - Kicking versus knee strikes. Kicks provide even more distance than boxing. However, the knee-striker can catch kicks, compromising the kicker's balance, and close to land knee strikes.

Rounds 7 - Knee-boxing. Both of us sparred with punches and knee strikes. The rule set here was that although both punches and knees could be used, only the latter scored.

Round 8 - Kickboxing with knee strikes. This is sparring using the rough ruleset for Dutch and Japanese Kickboxing.

Focus Mitt Work

Round 9 - We worked through combinations that came out of the sparring, namely teep/rear knee strike and jab/low rear round kick/lead knee strike to the body. I also went through some basic knee-boxing combinations: jab/cross/lead knee strike, jab/cross/hook/knee strike.

Heavy Bag

Round 10 - My client had more autonomy to integrate the above combinations.

Kickboxing Personal Training