I was woundering How you guys practice defense against round house kicks that come fast and hard?
What strategies do you guys use?
How do you practice it?
How successful are the techniques in sparring a skilled kicker?
What techniques do you use. Kwun Sau? Gan Sau? Pak Sau? or otheres?
The two safest ones I believe are both leg raising deflections . The first one is done by raising a Dai Sau , and your leg at the same time , knee to elbow so there is no gap . The arm and leg are raised on the same side their kick is coming from , when you raise your leg you are aggressively making contact with your shin into the soft part of the inner thigh by under kicking their kick .
As you make contact pivot with your support foot and slightly thrust your hip forward , the action of your leg raising under theirs takes the force out of their kick and the slight hip thrust with pivot affects their balance . It is important you make contact with your shin near to the groin as the height of this area does not really change no matter the height of the kick , unless of course he's doing a jumping kick .
It is also important that your body is facing slightly towards his inner thigh for maximum resistance . After you have deflected you can drop your leg down into a stamp kick on the knee of his support leg , or use your other leg to snap kick to his groin , thrusting heel kick to groin , hook kick to thigh or low heel kick to the knee .
The second technique is pretty much like the first except instead of using the same side leg we are now using a cross leg configuration. As he kicks we raise our arm in a Dai Sau to protect our head and then we make contact in exactly the same area as before except we are raising our leg in a hook kick to attack his inner thigh region , so he kicks with right leg and I deflect with my right leg hook kick .
Raise your hook kick up high and forcefully and on contact pivot your support foot and slight hip thrust into him , as before this will take the sting out of his kick and also attack his stance and balance , it is important arm is raised high to protect your head and like before no gap between knee and elbow , after the deflection you drop your leg down to a WC low side kick to the knee or use what ever kick is suitable for the range .
The way that we usually train these deflections is to have your partner throw easy roundhouse kicks from one side to the other , in the early stages you just try to raise your leg underneath his thighs as he kicks , making contact with your shin to his inner thigh . Do this in a continuous fashion performing many repetitions , after you have the basic movement down then you start to try and manipulate his balance with your hips and pivot .
Now try the same thing with the cross leg hook kick pattern , start off easy then start to pivot and use your hips to affect his balance . After you have done this mix the patterns together so that one side is doing a leg raise and the other is doing the hook kick leg raise deflection .
When you can do them pretty smoothly start adding your follow up stamp kicks to his legs . When you feel that you are ready then it is time to start with your partner throwing random round house kicks at you with realistic speed and power.
I have seen variations of these deflections in Muay Thai but their angles are a lot more closed and they use them as a shield or block rather than a deflection and they don't attack the structure of the opponent as we do.
I find that the trick with these deflections is in my case not to think of them as a deflection at all , I prefer to think of them as an attack . You try to kick me and I will make you pay by attacking your kick with my own kick directed at a soft and vulnerable area . If you just think of it as a defencive leg raise , you never seem to do it as fast and aggressive as when you think of it as a kick.
The same applys to leg jamming as well . Like if someone goes to kick you in the groin you really want to attack their shin with your heel as opposed to just holding your leg up and guarding . I've always found the action to be faster if you think of it aggressively as a kick , your leg just seems to spring off the ground a lot quicker in my opinion .
