Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

How to do a leg kick, aka shin kick. Part 2

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UPDATE: The Leg Kick: Your Ultimate Guide to Using The Leg Kick for Mixed Martial Arts is now available! Click the link to get the book or click this picture:

The Leg Kick for MMA

Here’s Part Two of “How to do a leg kick.” It’s a bit more than I first planned on doing so I’m only covering the use of the lead arm. Otherwise this post would get way too big to read comfortably. I’ll talk about the rear arm in Part Three. Here we go:

The lead arm
There are a bunch of factors involved here and, in my opinion, things aren’t black or white. You can move the lead arm in a number of ways with each one having specific strengths and weaknesses. If you learned a certain way or have to do it because it’s “traditional”, that’s fine. As I stated in the first part, pick what you like from this guide and ignore the rest.

Keep the lead arm high and to the side.

  • As you kick, pull the arm in and try to keep the elbow close to your ribs. Keep your hand close to the lead side of your face as well, for obvious reasons.
  • This arm position has the advantage of protecting the lead side of the face and body. If your opponent counters with a hook or round kick to he body on that side, you have at least some protection there.
  • It’s also the easiest way to hold your lead arm. You’ll notice it doesn’t take much effort and comes naturally. [Read more…]

How to do a leg kick, aka shin kick. Part 1

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Call it what you want, the muay Thai shin kick, a leg kick, cut kick, low roundhouse kick. The name you call it by isn’t really that important, the results you can get form this kick are what counts. I fell in love with this kick when I bought my first muay Thai tape (in the days of VHS, a loooong time ago). It was an event headlining Rob Kaman vs. Ernesto Hoost. In that fight, Kaman leg kicked so hard that he knocked both of Hoost’s legs back, sending Ernesto stomach-first to the floor. To put it mildly, I was impressed. Check it out at 5.16 min:

Since that day, I started working on my leg kick and haven’t stopped. It’s one of my favorite techniques now, both for competition and self defense (yes, you read that right). In this “How To” guide, we’ll look at many different aspects; technique, tactics, combinations, etc. The idea is to offer a buffet, placing different pieces of information on the table so there’s something for all to enjoy. But just as with a real buffet, if you don’t like the food, don’t eat it. I’m just giving you my personal observations and preferences, the things that seem to work for me and my students.

If you do the kick differently or your teacher insists on another way, that’s perfectly fine. There are many variations, nuances and reasons to this technique. I just want to cover some information that would have helped me out when I saw Kaman’s leg kick and wanted to learn how to do that. Hopefully you’ll be able to use it too.

This how to guide has numerous parts; I’ll write them as time allows and update everything when it’s done. So check back every now and then to get the latest. Or you can subscribe via email to get the updates. Just enter your address in the upper right box her on my blog. Don’t forget to confirm your subscription once you receive the welcome mail.

Enough intro, here’s the first part.

[Read more…]

You teach, you bleed…

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OK, here’s another teaching concept I’ve found to be true: You get the most injuries when you hold back instead of going all out. Especially when you are in “teaching mode”.

Two of my students are preparing for a Sanshou tournament in a few months. As a result, the sparring sessions in class are more intense than otherwise. Most of my students train for different reasons than competing: they want to get in shape and be healthy, they want the stress-release you get from punching and kicking or they just enjoy the training. For them, the classes are not totally the same as for competitors. Everybody trains the same techniques but the standard for competitors is much higher. I expect and demand better performance of the techniques, speed, accuracy and above all good timing.

What could have been needed...
What could have been needed…

But when it comes to sparring, the division between the competitors and the other students can become problematic. Their sparring needs to be at a certain intensity to prepare them for the tournament but recreational students are not ready for that level. Nor should they have to be; they’re in class with other objectives in mind. So that’s one of the reasons why I still spar with my students. As I should be able to handle their techniques given my experience and the weight difference (I’m the heaviest guy on the mat, no comments please…), they can go all out and get plenty of experience that way.

[Read more…]

How to Train at a New Martial Arts School or Gym

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In the post about visiting another martial arts school, we looked at some do’s and don’ts for just that. Now let’s take the next step and see what happens once you enroll or start training at a new martial arts school. We’ll make a couple assumptions:

  • You only visited the school once or twice.
  • You talked to the teacher a bit and perhaps to some of the other students.
  • Other than that, your knowledge of that school is pretty limited.

This last bullet is the key point: you step into the new school with very limited information of how it works. Sure, there’s what the teacher and perhaps a couple others told you but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is all the things you actually need to know; the social dynamics and “rules of the land”. No teacher walks up to you in your first class to tell you that such and such is a good black belt but he has a tendency to crank on joint locks way too hard. Or that he absolutely hates it when students try to show off and lets them sweat it out afterwards.

Yet this is crucial information as you enter the school: You have a martial arts background, you have training, which means you’re accustomed to the dynamics of your own school. You know how to handle these things within your own environment. You learned it either the hard way (getting thumped on the head) or by observing your fellow students. But now you’re in another place where things are different. There are too many opportunities for somebody to hurt you, so you have to figure out how things work in this school.

how-to-train-at-a-new-martial-arts-school-or-gym

Here are a couple things you can do to avoid these situations: [Read more…]

How to visit another martial arts school or gym

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On a forum I visit, a member posted his story of visiting another martial arts school. He speaks of asking the teacher a question only to get attacked as an answer. He didn’t understand the teacher’s reaction and asked if other members had experienced this type of thing. Personally, I’ve been there a number of times, both with instructors as well as students of the schools I visited. So here’s my response:

Sometimes the teacher has the ego problem but other times students are the reason why it degenerates to blows. The last time I trained regularly in a muay Thai gym, the teacher was great. He saw I’d trained before and was real neat in showing lots of details. But the students only saw me as a new heavyweight to pound on to see how I would react. Then they were surprised when I started hitting back and complained I was heavier and stronger than them… It’s not like they didn’t know that upfront.

Another time, a friend and I organized an open mat for shuai jiao and tui shou. We acted as referees and made sure everybody had fun training. The problem was a well known instructor who showed up with his two Chinese teachers He was arrogant from the get go and ended up telling my friend there was obviously nobody of any real skill present and he and his teachers should take over. My friend kindly told him no. So his shuai jiao teacher joined the session and tried to show off only to get tossed around for his trouble. They calmed down a bit. When my friend’s Chinese teacher arrived, they left in a hurry…

To balance things out, a positive experience: I was invited to a semi-private class by a student of a big name FMA teacher. I showed up and sat down on a chair. Waited until the teacher came over and introduced myself while thanking him to allow me to watch his class. After a while he invited me to share a technique if I felt like it. I did and he was very gracious about it. He asked if I wanted to join in a bit so I did. Everybody was very respectful and I tried to reciprocate as best as possible. We went for drinks after class and had a great time.

So I guess it is possible but takes some careful navigating to step into another school.”

how-to-visit-a-new-martial-arts-school-or-gym

These are just a couple of the things I’ve encountered while visiting other schools, there are more stories but let’s not go there today. Suffice it to say that my experiences are not unique, not by a long shot. Pretty much everybody who’s been training for a while has similar tales to tell. But there’s another side to that coin, not every teacher reacts this way to visitors because he’s a bully. Here’s another reply of mine: [Read more…]

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