Learning The Round Kick: Kickboxing Private Lesson

jamie03066
Oct 22
3 min read

Me demonstrating a high round kick against a heavy bag

09.10.2025

My client's second hour of private kickboxing lessons brought us onto the round kick. He cross-trains a different discipline in a regular club where round kicks are delivered in the savate/karate/taekwondo style. The Thai round kick, which is the type I teach in the CCMA Kickboxing course is distinctly different.

Breaking Down the Thai Round Kick

We broke down the rear kick into two stages:

Step out 45 degrees - flat foot for a low kick and on the ball of the foot for a mid or high kick - and simultaneously post the rear hand into the opponent's face.
Pivot on said foot whilst swiping back with the rear hand, bringing the lead hand to the face for protection and drive the rear shin into the target.

The kick requires a full body rotation and an explosive torque. When kicking, aim to chop down into the target especially with the low kick.

When shadow boxing it is important to encourage flow and then later consider tactical behaviour. For example, when beginning and warming up it is often good to allow for a full rotation of the kick, moving the body through a 360 degree spin. However, once my client grasped the flowing nature of the technique and how this will translate to power, I advised that he stop the kick just past the point of impact and to quickly come back to stance with a firm shin-check.

The Shin-Check Against a Round Kick

Now was as good at time as ever to introduce this defence, which can be nicely coupled with a return round kick as a counter-move. The shin-check comes up at 45-degrees to intercept the incoming kick with the leg bent at a 90-degree angle, the foot flat to help stabilise the lower part of the leg and the elbow slightly overlapping on the outside to provide a shield of bone. There is a variation for dealing with very low round kicks, sometimes known as calf-kicks. Here the foot is planted flat and the shin turned out at 45 degrees, similar to the way the supporting leg is positioned for the low round kick.

Me demonstrating a transitional phase of the throwing the rear leg round kick. Note the rear hand swiping back as the rear leg drives forward to help generate power and the lead hand comes up to my face for protection.

Switch Round Kick

Next up I taught the switch-kick. This technique is a round kick delivered with the lead leg, where the rear leg briefly replaces its position in order to generate more power. In order to train this correctly, we first trained the step-kick. Here the rear foot just steps in front of the lead foot before throwing the kick. Once balance and fluidity was confirmed, I encouraged my client to be increase his speed and to be more explosive in his action.

One of my regular clients executing a mid-section round kick as another one of my clients uses a Dutch block.

Chaining The Round Kick

We then moved onto chaining on the round kick to a series of four basic Boxing combinations: jab/rear round kick, jab/cross/switch-kick, jab/cross/hook/rear round kick and jab/cross/hook/cross/switch-kick.