Closing the gap 101: (**UPDATED: Forgot an exercise.)

King, I love the choice of music you have on your my space.

46 and 2 is probably one of the most motivating songs out there for me.
 
It's "The Grudge" now, but yeah, especially if you know the theology behind 46 and 2 it's supremely motivating.
 
I need to read this so much. When I spar at kickboxing, I can NEVER get close to this guy, the top guy in the class, nationally ranked and all. He is like 4 inches taller than me and has realllly long legs, everytime I try to get in on him he just stuffs me with a side kick and it fucks me up. He is so fast and powerful with his legs, he gets like 5 kicks on me before I can blink. However, when he trades with me, I always get the best of it and end up either knocking him down or putting him off balance. I always ahve to take some punishment to get in and even if I can get in and fuck him up, he'd always win the point game.
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Sorry man, this post got overlooked but it just so happens I have an exercise that may help you be able to get in on this guy's kicks. See in my class one year we had this TKD dude come out who stood about 6'2"-6'3". A lot of my Gung Fu students could never, ever get close to him because not only did his legs never fucking end, but he did TKD, primarily a kicking Art. Before they could even get anywhere remotely near punching range Brandon would have already lit them up with a front-snap-side-kick into a step-in side-kick combo. Only my Muay Thai student could get in on him because D.J. knew how to attack the legs. And he even got his lip bloodied for his troubles.

So I noticed (because paying a lot of attention is what made me a decent fighter/trainer) that we needed to develope an exercise that taught split-second timing to move from kicking to punching range. Now I don't think we "invented" this, but I never did see it before. This exercise is not only good to train up timing, reflexes, accuracy, and speed, but it's also fun as HELL and a GREAT way to take out frustrations in your class. Most times when doing this both of my students participating would end up chuckling and trading insults. I encouraged being aggressive and mean. lol

Trading Kicks with the Blocking Pads:

Now if you're schooled in kicking Arts and how to use certain kicks properly you know that nothing disrupts a kick like a counter-kick that's faster and simpler. I always encourage if you have an opponent who likes to throw fancy-pants kick techniques, RIGHT when he STARTS to move, throw a front-kick or teep as fast and hard as you can. This works beautifully especially if he's going for a spinning-kick or head-high kick. You'll knock him over more times than not, or at the very least a couple of steps back. This guy you're talking about counters with a side-kick, pretty fancy and smart, kind of made me smile picturing your utter confusion at getting stuffed by it. lol But you can stuff him in-return. Bye the way, don't let him see you practicing this or he'll get wise to it pretty quick.

So, to train up your speed, accuracy, sense of timing, and even power for countering a kick with a kick here's what you do. Have a partner who is maybe a little better than you, or at least equal skill hold a blocking pad and you hold one yourself. Pick a kick, and both of you fire the kicks at the same time. It's going to be very fast and messy at first. My students used to just try and machine-gun each other off their feet. That's the rule of the game. First one off their feet or to give-in loses. If you want to work with boundaries have a circle, maybe 10 feet in circumference either drawn or taped off, and first to the boundary loses. What you're going to notice when you do this is which of your kicks are weak, strong, fast, slow, etc. After like the first few minutes you'll both start getting tired and this is where the real fun begins. Because now it becomes a chess game. I rememeber periods of like 30 seconds where two of my students would just be there smiling at each other, sucking wind, then out of NOWHERE one would pop a spinning-back-kick. The other would attempt to stuff it with a teep. Sometimes it worked out, other times they got knocked on their ass.

When two students got really good at it they hardly threw any kicks, but the ones they did made a HUGE impact. They had graduated beyond just trying to overwhelm each other with kick combinations and into marksmanship with their kicks. So fast and accurate it was extremely difficult to catch one or counter. When two students were of equal skill it was like watching a car accident. Both would fire a kick at the EXACT same time and nature had to determine who came out the better. lol

It's a fun exercise and works on a lot of things at once. Speed, power, accuracy, timing, as I already named, plus it gives you an idea of your conditioning and how to conserve your energy if you're going to use kicks.

If you want to do this and train leg-kicks and head-high kicks at the same time that's easy enough, dawn head-gear and shin guards if you have them. But the head-high kicks cannot be full-power unfortunately. Do this for a couple of months and that dude is going to find it harder to stuff you because you'll stuff him right back with say a front-kick. Now, if you pair this with one of the other exercises in my initial post, over time you'll even be able to side-step and deliver a kick of your own. Making him miss entirely and eat one of your kicks. But that's a ways away and he'll hopefully be tough to do that to.

Hope this helps.
 
I updated the initial post as well but I'll put this here, too so no one misses it:

This exercise is for shooting.

**Dragon Cross - I knew in typing all this I'd forget something. This is an exercise I learned that wasn't intended for improving strength, speed, and proper form of shooting but it just too closely resembled the motions for me not to notice.

Take two dumbbells of moderate weight, say 10 or 15lb'ers. Stand with your feet together and extend your arms outward, palms up, dumbbells gripped in-hands. Step forward and lunge, as you lunge turn the dummbells from horizontal to vertical, and as your rear knee gets closer to the ground bring the dumbbells together in front of your body in the fly motion. Hold the bottom positon as long as you can, then slowly rise by stepping forward and pulling your rear-leg forward as you stand back upright, slowly lower your arms until they are at your sides (this should resemble the fast yank you do when pulling someone off their feet for a single or double-leg takedown). The exercise ends when you're back in standing position but now with your hands at your sides and a couple feet forward from where you began, repeat.
 
Sorry King i am not familiar with the Word teep and i see alot of ppl using it. I assume its a kick but not sure which one....I think it might be called somthing diffrent in my dojo. Can u explain what it is exactly to me?
 
A teep is the Muay Thai version of the front-kick. It's not as snapping, more elongated and deliberate in the pushing motion.
 
spiff1242 said:
Amazing tips once again, Kabuki. Hey, you think you could put these articles up on a webpage so we could have them in one place? It would be a really awesome resource!
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yeah, and you could give the page a cool name like, "striker's edge" or fightform.com or something. that would definitely help out both beginners and veterans alike.
 
How about we quit talking politics and some of you guys try this shit out and let me know how it works for you? lol
 
King-

Holy Moly.
Very good, printed this a few days ago and went at it.

You know how much I love the double-end bag.
 
King-

Holy Moly.
Very good, printed this a few days ago and went at it.

You know how much I love the double-end bag.
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I asked you this in another thread and didn't see if you responded, but what happened to your Av? I enjoyed seeing you murdering that moop.
 
King Kabuki said:
Now if you're schooled in kicking Arts and how to use certain kicks properly you know that nothing disrupts a kick like a counter-kick that's faster and simpler. I always encourage if you have an opponent who likes to throw fancy-pants kick techniques, RIGHT when he STARTS to move, throw a front-kick or teep as fast and hard as you can. This works beautifully especially if he's going for a spinning-kick or head-high kick. You'll knock him over more times than not, or at the very least a couple of steps back. This guy you're talking about counters with a side-kick, pretty fancy and smart, kind of made me smile picturing your utter confusion at getting stuffed by it. lol But you can stuff him in-return. Bye the way, don't let him see you practicing this or he'll get wise to it pretty quick.
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Great posts, man, I'd just like to point out that this type of countering is very common in kicking arts (TKD especially) as a good way to throw a kicker off balance. Often a front side kick (cut kick) is used for this, aimed at the hip, which intercepts the kick and often lands the opponent on his ass.

In arts like TKD, you are taught to read the hip movements, not kicks, and to strike/react as soon as you see a movement of the hips.

Just a word of warning though, if you use this sort of counter often, the most standard thing to do is to fake and then counter your kick. So use it sparingly, otherwise you risk getting into a kicking exchange with the guy, and this is not necessarily something you want to do.
 
King Kabuki said:
I asked you this in another thread and didn't see if you responded, but what happened to your Av? I enjoyed seeing you murdering that moop.
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Time to change I suppose.

I need to fight again so perhaps I can have a better image to share.
Lets not forget, that moop won, but Im still pretty which is more than I can say for him.
 
King Kabuki, you should make one for grapplers. Being a striker, you would know some advantage points for grapplers to get by the threat.
 
For grapplers to close the gap against strikers?

Easy...learn to strike.
 
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