22/09/20 Tuesday night’s teacher consultancy lesson focused on the details of the front kick. This was particularly connected the way the kick is used in full-contact fighting. All types of front kick have found their place in MMA and Kickboxing sports. The snap version seen in karate appears less frequently in full contact competition because its main target is usually the groin and works on an upward trajectory. However, Anderson Silva shocked the world in his UFC 126 match when he knocked out Vitor Belfort using this type of front kick, striking his opponent’s jaw with the ball of his foot. What is more common is the thrusting version. In Muay Thai a front thrusting kick is known as a teep and is typically seen as a push kick. However, it is far more than this. Dutch and Oriental Rules kickboxing typically use a very percussive thrusting front kick. Muay Thai, of course, also uses their teeps to cause impact and knockouts are not uncommon. A key feature of Muay Thai is the way the teep is used like a kicking version of a boxer’s jab. The kick is thrown out to create and maintai n distance as well as feel out an opponent. My client mentioned the obvious disadvantages with a potentially slower version of the front kick. Kicks also compromise balance, so this is a very valid point. I explained the use of the hands to help camouflage the kick and also the timing. There is an inherent risk but nak muays typically throw all their kicks from a much closer range than the majority of stand-up combat sports. We looked at ways the teep varies. Much like there are different variations on the jab, the lead teep has different cadences. In addition to the common push version, a sharp jabbing teep can be thrown and might be compared to a pump jab as well as a slapping or stomping variation. However, the biggest changes we covered were the oblique and side kicking techniques. The oblique kick is more often credited to Savate (French Kickboxing), but I learned it through my Muay Thai training and found it to be a very effective leg kicking technique. Bas Rutten also famously uses it on his favourite target, the liver. The side kick version was always taught to me as more of a kicking version of an overhand punch. Side teeps are different from conventional side kicks in that the fighter does not assume a bladed stance when executing the kick. Rather he tends to turn a regular teep over in the middle of the execution.
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