Haha thanks Therizza, I get a mention!
Although I’ve given up my striking ways lately, too busy with the judo, and no striking instructor anymore. However I’m lookin at picking up some kickboxing classes…
Anyway! I agree with what rasturai said, mostly I don’t like doing kick/punch combinations on the bags, it never feels right.
Pretty much the only combo I practiced on the bag was a leading leg front/snap kick, jab/cross, but the kick would be light. Sometimes jab/cross rear leg round.
Practing single kicks was always ok though.
As rasturai said, time would be better spent just practicing your kicks, while maintaing a good guard, practice moving around, get the bag swinging and it’ll help your timing.
And yeah thai pads are the buisness, easily best way to practice cominations. Kick shields can be useful, it gives you a good idea of what it feels like to kick a human sized/weighted object that doesn’t just swing around like a bag does.
And of course, shadow-“boxing”! All the time! Infact I did much, much, much more of this than any other form of kick training-
You can do it by yourself, at any time,
it’s not as tiring as hitting a bag so you can do it more often, and it’s less stress on joints/tendons
you can work in more footwork, as the target can be imagined to be any-where,
it teaches good kick-retraction, you don’t rely on hitting the target to maintain balance
As far as combo’s-
of course jab cross, rear round is a staple
I mentioned lead leg snap, jab cross.
The stuff rasturai mentioned was all good-
For more “fancy” stuff-
practice missing a rear leg round, follow up w/ lead spinning back fist.
rear leg snap to spin/or jump back-kick,
or, a very “taekwondo combo”- front snap, rear round, jump back-kick. This is a good combo for building kicking skills/balance/timing- but should not- NOT- be used in self-defence/sparring/comp. unless you really rock the guy first, or that front snap kick really drills them, and even then, it’s a very risky move. But it’s still a fun combo, with benefits.
That’s about all I can offer someone comming from a boxing background- in tkd we used alot of the kicks to bridge the distance- say a rear leg snap kick where you land in southpaw and continue the combo from there. Although I think being ambidexturous with your fighting can have advantages, I know that most people would feel more comfortable fighting just one “way” i.e. in once stance.
Otherwise things like- rear leg snap into southpaw jab cross, back into natural stance- have worked really well for me, it gets you in and out really fast.
It’s probably important to note that when using a kick to come in, that the kick should be retracted, then you should set the foot down- do no just let the foot fall to the ground as you complete the kick, this is asking for someone to kick it out from underneath you. Complete the kick, retract it, then set it down in front of you. I hope that makes sense…
Also switch kicks can be useful… where you kind of “pop” the hips back into opposite stance then do a round kick, or you might pop one way then the other then kick, it can really throw peoples timing right out.
Of course once you decide to work in elbows and knees it opens up a whole new world of combinations!
May I ask why you are practing kicks? Self-defence? Just for the fun/variety of it? Planning on a kickboxing comp?
And can someone tell me a good reason why kickboxers/ muay thai guys never seem to use side kicks?
Because I very rarely see it, and I left them out of the above combo’s, for fear of there being a good reason why and me getting flamed.
I only have limited experience sparring, and have never used kicks in self defence, so I don’t know how practical they are. But I do know that they are one of my hardest kicks… and in sparring they have been effective at times…
Anyway hope that this helped, sorry that it was abit of a novel…
Oh!- and work in fakes, too- I found it helped to think of them as double kicks-
throw a rear leg-kick, about a foot out from the target, then actually throw a head kick,
same can work with snap kicks.
