Moving forward with our ‘Muay Thai 101’ series is the introduction to basic kicking attacks.
This video will cover the two easiest (and personal favorites) kicking techniques in Muay Thai:
Knees, and Push Kicks.
The knee and push kicks are similar techniques because they both require a ‘thrusting’ of your hips.
The difference being the weapon that is used to distribute this force, and to which direction the force is sent.
Let’s start with the rear knee.
As always, we start in our fight stance, and the first step taken is with the lead leg.
Two ways to step forward:
1. If you are new to the technique, it’s ok to step with a flat lead foot.
2. If you have some experience, try to step on the ball of your foot.
Note: Stepping on the ball of your foot requires a little more balance, but will allow you to thrust your hips a little more, thus your technique to follow through a lot further.
Attempt this once you are comfortable with the whole knee technique. Better to grasp an idea of the big picture first, and wittle down to the details.
When you knee, you are striking with the actual knee cap, and the surrounding muscle.
Think of it as a big massive first being sent to your opponents abdomen.
To create the ‘tightness’ of the fist with your knee, you have to point your toes back, lock your ankle and tuck your heel to your butt once you begin to execute the technique.
This will make your knee look like an acute, sharp angle. Think ‘Spearhead’
Rear arm swings back to act as a counter balance.
Once you are done with your technique, land back into your fight stance.
Remember, once you step to execute the technique, you must follow through with all the steps in one fell swoop.
It may seem like a lot is going on, but allow me to abbreviate it in the manner I teach it in real time:
“Step, point your toes, heel to butt, knee, back to stance”.
Simple, right?
Ok, now the push kick.
Push kick, front kick, teep, foot jab. Several names for it, and in my opinion they all sorta mean the same thing. So as to not get caught up on the nomenclature, all the names I just listed all mean the same to me, which is going to be the technique I am going to explain next.
Now, this is the introduction to attacking with your lead leg.
The lead leg push kick is a foundational technique of TBI which is why I teach it first.
We start in our fight stance.
Now, instead of stepping forward, we shift our entire weight onto our rear leg so as to make our lead leg light and easy to lift WITHOUT having to step.
We lift our lead leg up with a bent knee. This is called “chambering”.
We chamber our push kick, thrust our hips, extend our leg in a straight line and strike our target with the ball of the foot of our lead (striking) leg.
We retract our leg tracing the path of the straight line we drew when we commenced the attack.
Trace that line back onto your chamber, settle back into your fight stance.
The rear push kick works in a similar manner.
Only difference is that you step with your lead leg forward and attack with the rear leg in a similar, thrusting manner.
And in a nutshell, those are two of the three kicking techniques found in Muay Thai. 🙂