When I saw this clip the title popped up at once. The strong contrast is suggested by the idea that we train martial art and study many different ways of striking our opponents from many different angles using a varieties of kicks and punches. Sad reality is that, physiologically, our head can just about bear a single, powerful full on kick or punch before giving in. So to win a fight it would be enough to wait the right moment and strike… but obviously when both opponent are prepared for it this strike some times does not come as it should.
The first part of the video shows the completely different style of the two opponents that are later fighting in a K1 contest:
Mighty Mo shows in the various fights he wins how the power of a single strike that connects cleanly on the head can put any fighter KO;
Kaoklai Kaennorsing shows how mobile he is and how his opponents can hardly touch him.
Then the surprise comes in the way the fight finishes: enjoy the view and let me know what you think.
Dan Inosanto is a very famous martial artist and master: he joined one of Bruce Lee’s school back in 1964 and developed his skills in becoming a master in at least 6 differents arts.
Silat is family of martial arts originated in South East Asia, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia: what I find fascinating about Silat is the very flowing movements develop into strikes, joint locks and throws, switching in very fast motions between one position and the other.
This short clip I found on YouTube shows Dan Inosanto explaining a couple of combinations of attack and defence that develop from a kick and a punch from the attacker into his total annihilation. The guy on the right hand side of the screen is Ron Balicky, director of the Inosanto Academy and expert himself of Jeet Kune Do, Silat and several other styles.
Whenever you see in a movie a guy fighting one or more attackers armed with knives don’t believe what you are seeing: most of the times it’s rubbish. I have seen lots of knife defence that simply won’t work when, in the street, a random guy (or girl) pulls out a knife and try stabbing your guts or slashing your throat. I am sorry to say but too many teachers out there give to their students a false illusion about how easy it may be disarming an attacker carrying knife and bad intentions toward you.
At the same time there are a few styles that seem more realistic about how to deal with armed attackers. In fact I am inclined to follow the logic that a style that trains weapons to start with, like most styles from Indonesia and the Philippines, and move toward bare handed fighting at a later stage (e.g. when you loose your weapon you should/must carry on fighting).
I am personally terrified of edged weapons because of my relatively short experience and lack of continuous practice. Although I probably have the knowledge and skill to fight and defeat a random attacker from the street in a life or death situation I am always hoping that day will never come. I have been following Maul Mornie for some time and he never fails to impress me with his very logical, essential and wise defence techniques. Please have a look at this video and let me have your comments:
Different schools and styles of martial arts teach the hook kick (also called reversed round kick) in different ways. Main differences manifest essentially in the way the movement originates, how the kicking leg is moving during the kick and what part of the foot hits the target that can be the hill or the sole/ball of the foot.
When I teach how to perform a hook kick, I first clarify that to maximise performance the leg should follow a whipping movement to ensure maximum acceleration of the foot toward the target.
I also suggest to always hit with the ball of the foot. Here are for 3 good reasons both physiological and in terms of pure performance for doing that rather than the (side of the) hill, keeping the foot at 90° to the ankle:
better reach: having the foot extended it increases your range by nearly the full length of your foot ensuring you will hit, from the same position, targets that would not be reachable if you bend your foot.
stronger impact: if the angular speed of the leg moving is constant having a longer weapon (by the length of the foot) increases the speed of the foot itself, build up a higher momentum and delivers a stronger kick..
safer for you: the Achilles’ tendon is a weak point and if you squash it against a skull it will hurt your foot to the point you might not be able of walking for some time. Even if the impact is not straight on the Achilles’ tendon it can still hit the many nerves that are exposed both on the internal and external part of the hill, moving toward the ankle. The ball of the foot is very well padded and can bear much stronger impact than the edge of the hill.
improve flexibility: with the full fully extended the natual flexibility of the leg is highly helped; to the contrary trying to extend a leg while the tibial (shin) muscles are tensed in order to keep the ankle at 90° will have some groups of muscles that are fighting against the direction of your kick getting the muscles behind the leg less prone to extend
faster: if all muscles involved in the movement are pushing in the same direction and the others are simply relaxed the overall speed will be improved.
In terms of pure power the hook kick is not to be considered at the top of the scale where round kick and other forward kicks can develop much stronger impact. Things change when spinning backward where the whole spinning momentum adds up to the actual mechanical movement of the kick itself.
Extra information about the hook kick can be found by checking this video:
Many people, too many people, confuse Kickboxing with Thai Boxing (also called Muai Thai): perhaps it is because of the generalization that many schools do in defining any fighting sport that uses upper and lower body strikes (e.g. punches and kicks) as Kickboxing. I used the term fighting sport to indicate a martial art that gets practiced according to some sport rules: these rules define, among other things, what can be used as a striking weapon and what areas of the opponent’s body can be hit.
In general the correct definition for Kickboxing is what is also called American Kickboxing, the style initially defined in the late sixties / early seventies as Full Contact Karate. The pioneers of this sport where people like Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis and Benny Urquidez: they eventually renamed it Kickboxing to indicate a Boxing fight with added kicks when got into disagreement with the traditional Karate people that were (and are) still fighting with little or no contact. Several other styles get called Kickboxing while being obviously something else: Thai Boxing, topic of this post, is the typical example but Savate, a French style with some obvious differences gets called Kickboxing and even Sanda, a sport application of Kung Fu gets sometimes called Chinese Kickboxing.
Although there are some very obvious differences between Kickboxing and Thai Boxing I will try to make them very obvious for the neophyte:
Kickboxing is American and Thai Boxing is Thai… not that easy to spot to the untrained observer but the most obvious aspect of this difference is in the uniform that is generally adopted although there are exceptions. The former one uses (and imposes during tournaments) long trousers while the latter uses broad silk shorts, usually in very bright colours.
Kickboxing uses the same range of punches from standard IBF Boxing plus back fist and knife hand strike together with all most obvious kicks: front, side, round, axe and so on, including all variations of jumping, spinning back. Thai Boxing allows all of the above and adds elbow and knee strikes: in reality knees are considered kind of preferential weapon and they tend to deliver a high percentage of the most devastating blows.
In Kickboxing you cannot grab and hold any of the opponents limbs or body parts: Thai Boxing allows for example grabbing the opponent’s leg and hold onto it while striking at the rest of the body; it is also allowed to clinch and strike at the same time.
Kickboxing’s techniques can land on the opponent’s torso, face and head: no strikes are allowed to the legs, back or back of the head. Thai Boxing can strike everywhere excluding the groin area.
Kickboxing is practiced wearing full protection kit made of gloves, mouth guard, groin guard, shin and foot pad: Thai Boxing fighters wear just gloves, mouth and groin guard.
Kickboxing’s competitions can follow Semi, Light or Full contact rules: Thai Boxing just applies to Full contact.
Just because video are better than words, now that a bit of explanation has been offered please have a look at these two examples I found. The first is a friendly demonstration fight between Bill Wallace and Dominique Valera: please notice the variety of techniques and how spectacular they look. If they were in a competition they would have been less spectacular and much more violent:
The second video shows a Thai Boxing fight. Although the number of techniques available to Thai Boxing fighters is larger than most of the other fighting sports the actual number of techniques effectively used is generally smaller:
I hope you enjoyed this post and the video I selected as examples: any comment is, as usual, highly appreciated.
