kicking

[olinek]

lets talk about kicking... possibly my favourite attack.

during the evans/machida fight Joe Rogan pointed out that the level of striking especially with the legs in MMA is nothing much compared to the level of leg strikes in kickboxing like K1.

I'll tell you why kicking gets so much flack.. cause it is criticized by people who have not taken the time to get proficient at it.

But when you spend your entire childhood or more doing lunging kicks across the room to the point where you can lunge 5 m witha kick. Spend time pounding the heavy bag and working the pads. You can't just start training them in sparring.. you need solid foundation.

But man when someone does...

For me best martial arts scene ever was bruce lee showing the china men his side kick, when he sent him flying across the room into a stack of boxes.

Its a deadly fucking attack a power side kick (when you step into the kick) but you gotta learn to use it. You start with something like a solar plexus aimed front kick followed by a few jabs L R L then a powerful lunging round kick to the chest level, retract quickly and while he is stumbled cut him down with the pwer side kick,, possibly on the head depending on theangle, possibly to the gut, kdney, lower back (depending on rules of any).

And when you put the time into them, you realize you have a bundle of exceptional tools at your disposal.

so many kicks to choose from, and they each have different uses but can be devastating.. An axe kick is one of my favourite. Clean axe kick hit to the collar bone would end a fight right there. Or, axe kick to the hands.. (works even better when they got gloves) to drop the hands and make room for your knuckles).

A real awkward kick is what I learned as a roundhouse kick. I know lots of MAs consider a roundhouse kick a "round kick" but the roundhouse comes in like a round kick but foot comes in like a side kick. It is a very hard kick but super deadly... cause it can slip around the hands... for example, roundhouse kick to the forehead, teeth or neck.

ANd how about spinnin back kicks or spinning side kicks.. my god it takes a long time to learn the timing and set up for them to be effective, but you can develop such a tremendous impact.



ramble about kicking.

what your your thoughts on kicking, or favourite kciks.

[Dominator350]

knees are good, kicking people in the knees is good also, and probably the safest form of kicking, but kicking is terrible in general. Front kicks to the chest are alright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73uMzF-7sU&feature=related


Id never use it in a street fight. Ah its like this. A kick in real life is like the crazy move you can do in a video game thats absolutly insane but takes away half your life. You might as well get proficient at throwing out a cluster of solid punches in 30 second bursts then try to go for the ONE kick that might cripple a guy, but it also might get you killed.

[GreenLight]

A real kicking master would be able to kick in an MMA fight. Most of them train MT,BJJ and Boxing, so they don't get great kicks. I still hold that a karate style roundhouse kick, side kick or hook kick can do damage.
By karate style, I mean not MT roundhouse. Bill Wallace style or Paul Zaichik style.
Many morons that I meet these days, yell don't kick with your instep, kick with your shin. That's because they never got hit by a good instep rounhouse, that's why.

[USMC machine]

You have had guys who cam from K1 and MT who turned out to mediocre or have a rough time adapting their style to MMA. Guys like Kit Cope and Mark Hunt are good examples. Kicking can led to being takedown and a standup fighter doesn't want to be on the ground with a D1/Olympic caliber wrestler, sambo specialist, or a BJJ blackbelt. (i.e. Mirko Crocop and Pat Barry) If you every seen a karate guy or MT guys on the ground it's not a pretty sight. Also, if a guy catches you kick you can be knocked out like in the Anderson Silva/James Irvin fight.

Another thing, you have to realize that MMA is still at the infancy stages. The UFC as we know it has only been around for 10 years or so. So a lot of these guys fighting right now came up trained in one discipline all there lives (i.e. wrestling) then later on adapted other forms of fighting like boxing to complement their games. In result you have a person with excellent wrestling with sloppy/limited striking or vice versa.

In boxing you have guys that have been boxing since they came out the womb, in MMA you don't have that. Now that MMA is become more mainstream, and gobally accepted, the kids that will be training MMA from day one are just being born right now. The competition has been getting tougher and tougher in MMA by the minute and it's only going to get better from here on out.

[Cheeze_Baron]

I like seeing kicks in mma, especially the ones that end the fight! But I still find it asinine when I see fighters throwing it out there without any setup or not using it as a counter-attack, did they really think they were going to catch someone with their half-assed non-commited kicks?! Axe kicks are brutal and nice to see and are uber-effective when landed, but I can see how it would leave a fighter open in a mma setting, Andy Hug had some pretty nasty axe kicks. I don't think most folks have beef with kicking overall then they do with high kicks, which would definetly leave someone open if they missed, but its mma, so they should have some basis on ground defense and sprawling. I think they should allow stomps to a downed opponent in the UFC, that should take care of the sloppy ground defense you see with downed opponents, failure to answer a second stomp to the face would be an automatic tko. As for kicks outside of sparring or matches, I'd say no to there use there, a pre-emptive strike via a punch is much more effective and low risk compared to any kind of kick, especially within borderline grappling range, sure a low kick to the knee or outside the thigh or even a front kick to the groin are within range and are effective within their own right, they're not going to end it in a second like a good well placed punch, though a kick can be done after-but not first.

[Raja]

One of the most devastating kicks I've seen are Crocop's kicks. Definitely some amazing technique there.

My only criticism of muay thai is its lack of use of snapping in its kicks. That snapping action can be devastating when done right, not to mention when you retract your leg you are much less vulnerable. The only problem with kicks is the setup time involved versus punches. But if you know wish to maintain a certain distance from the opponent (who may be punching dominated), then kicks are your friend.