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andyscriven
andyscriven's picture
A great drill to utilize leg kicks in class or partner training.

I have used this drill for many years to teach students the template for using leg kicks in sparring. I am first and foremost a karate teacher but studied and taught Muay Thai/Boran or many years. The similar use if the kicks in karate made me start using this drill in my Karate class. The students loved them and in particular using them in conjunction with angles.

The drill is a template for which set ups and counters can be added by each individual to make it a personal drill for their style of fighting. As leg kicks feature heavily in Bunkai I thought I would share it.

Here's the link. Let me know what you think

Andy

Marcus_1
Marcus_1's picture

Nice drills, I especially like the ones getting off-line, very good for a self protection point of view.  For many years, I have always avoided using kicks in anything other than points sparring due to the obvious impracticalities from a self protection view point, that was until I took a Kyokushin class and realised the obvious benefit of lower leg kicks - "without legs, man can't walk".

In my job, we teach various strikes to the common peronial nerve cluster, that nice lump of nerves endings circling the top of the leg, right where your drills target, these are great for knee strikes, baton strikes, and indeed low kicks, a good connection causes a sympathetic shock due to the amount of confusing signals being sent to the brain (time on target prinicple), wopes out the legs, causing what is commonly known as "dead leg".

As mentioned, I seriously like the drills to step off line, in my view, changing that body position not only loads the hips better for a more potent kick, it also gets you out of the way of whatever is coming towards you, be it a punch, bat or something more sinister such as a knife. It also opens up the assailants body for more strikes and control techniques that simply aren't available if you remain in line with them.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Very nice! Thanks for sharing!

All the best,

Iain  

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Nice drill Andy,

we use similar in our training.

Kind regards

Les

andyscriven
andyscriven's picture

Thanks Les

andyscriven
andyscriven's picture

Thanks for your feedback Marcus. 

After years of getting hit I worked alot on stepping off line when striking and defending. It just works so well.

After following Ian for sometime I realised that leg kicks were in my style and started bringing this into my classes. This drill got my students used to stepping offline and I have added several options on. It works for us really well and is more realisitic.