Old dog new tricks

Bill Mattocks

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Did a little sparring last night. Tried something new, it worked.

Opponent leads left leg forward. I'm also left leg forward. With right rear leg, kick opponent's lead leg inside at the calf, using an inside sweep movement. Apply kick with bottom of foot, like a push kick.

Do it well, opponent swings to his right, giving you his back. Grab both shoulders, continue push kick while pulling his shoulders. Down he goes. So much fun I did it twice.

Next sequence. Smaller but faster opponent who likes to get inside and hammer away at my midsection. Fortunately I have a strong midsection. We're more or less squared up. Right forearm to opponent's chest arm horizontal to floor. Push forward with a snap. He goes back two inches, momentarily over balanced backwards. Deliver right leg push kick to chest, hard push. He's digging drywall out of his ears.

Fun times!
 

JR 137

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I like to switch to right leg forward, get very close, get them to lean on me a bit, knock down/forearm push their right hand down, and right foot hook kick to the back of the head.

One of the extremely few high kicks I do. Works like a charm. One guy said "I knew it was coming once you got close, and you've done it a few times, but it still gets me every time. I'm just glad that you don't follow through with it."
 

JowGaWolf

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Video please. Congrats on trying something new and for it to work. Video of the technique. I'm lost at push kick.
 
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Bill Mattocks

Bill Mattocks

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Video please. Congrats on trying something new and for it to work. Video of the technique. I'm lost at push kick.
It may be a bit before I can facilitate that for you, but let me try to explain in the meantime.

Imagine you are sparring, left lead, and you suddenly change leads. Right foot becomes the lead, yes?

Now imagine that as you change leads, instead of planting your right foot on the ground, you kick the inside of your opponent's leading left leg, right at calf level. If you deliver the kick with your instep, the opponent's lead leg lifts. If they have weight on it, they may stumble and fall. However, if you lift your knee a bit and deliver the kick with the sole of your foot, it is less of a snapping motion and more of a pushing motion.

So you are causing their lead leg to fold up at the knee. You're going with the joint motion, not against it. Not trying to break their knee. But as the knee buckles, their body turns toward the direction their lead knee is pointing. That should turn them to their right in the scenario I described.

At this point, you seize both shoulders and pull back, while continuing the pushing motion with your kick. They fall down with their face roughly situated between your legs, looking up. Were it a real fight, that is where the crossover stomp kick to the noggin happens.

As an experiment, consider your opponent as already facing away from you. You walk up behind them, grab their shoulders, and kick slowly (pushing) one of their knees, forcing it to buckle. This is that, except you use your initial kick as you are changing leads to force them to turn away from you.

The kick itself resembles those judo sweeps, but delivered to the calf. Kind of.
 

JowGaWolf

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It may be a bit before I can facilitate that for you, but let me try to explain in the meantime.

Imagine you are sparring, left lead, and you suddenly change leads. Right foot becomes the lead, yes?

Now imagine that as you change leads, instead of planting your right foot on the ground, you kick the inside of your opponent's leading left leg, right at calf level. If you deliver the kick with your instep, the opponent's lead leg lifts. If they have weight on it, they may stumble and fall. However, if you lift your knee a bit and deliver the kick with the sole of your foot, it is less of a snapping motion and more of a pushing motion.

So you are causing their lead leg to fold up at the knee. You're going with the joint motion, not against it. Not trying to break their knee. But as the knee buckles, their body turns toward the direction their lead knee is pointing. That should turn them to their right in the scenario I described.

At this point, you seize both shoulders and pull back, while continuing the pushing motion with your kick. They fall down with their face roughly situated between your legs, looking up. Were it a real fight, that is where the crossover stomp kick to the noggin happens.

As an experiment, consider your opponent as already facing away from you. You walk up behind them, grab their shoulders, and kick slowly (pushing) one of their knees, forcing it to buckle. This is that, except you use your initial kick as you are changing leads to force them to turn away from you.

The kick itself resembles those judo sweeps, but delivered to the calf. Kind of.
Ohhh ok. this sounds very familiar to one of the kicks we use in kung fu. We have a kick that targets the back of the leg just as you described. I did some testing of this technique and you are right it does cause your opponent to turn as you described. When I was testing it, I tried to fight it, but once that pressure is on the back of the leg like that it's game over.

I'll take a video of this technique for you and you can tell me if it looks similar to what you did. I haven't discovered an escape for it yet. There's a version that you can do by pressing down with your knee as well, but it that technique isn't as easily deployed as the one that you are describing.
 

Kung Fu Wang

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The kick itself resembles those judo sweeps, but delivered to the calf. Kind of.
This is a good example that the "inside out crescent kick" can be used to escape a lot of these kind of leading leg knee level kicks. Most of the time, we try to understand how to use the "crescent kick" to attack. We may not pay enough attention on how to use "crescent kick" to escape a kick..
 

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