Kick for Kick (diary entry)

11.02.20   Tuesday night teacher training and we followed up on the work started in last week’s lesson and Saturday’s workshop on Muay Thai tactics for freestyle sparring.   We used the Dutch Kickboxing kicking drill to build up a to and fro rhythm of attack and defence. This begins with simply placing kicks to the inside and outside of the legs whilst on the move. Then the shin-check is introduced in order promote a defence. The objective is to be able to fire back immediately after an opponent throws their kick taking advantage of a vulnerable position. We then layered in parrying jabs and crosses. Throughout the exercise we looked at the relationship between the hands the kicks. Even when just kicks were being thrown I encouraged my client to set up the technique with a hand to the face. This has both mechanical and tactical advantages. It is used to create a strong torque in the mid-section to help generate force into the kick whilst also acts as a type of pawing distraction.   From here we moved onto the full four-punch combination – jab/cross/hook/cross or overhand. Odd number combinations used a rear kick and even number combinations used a lead or switch kick.