Need help taking away southpaw front kick.

[biscuitsbrah]

I have a taller, southpaw training partner who is very good at using his rear leg to front kick the body. It only takes about 2-3 for me to get very hurt to the body, as he only throws it when I’m closing distance. He’s actually finished multiple training partners including me and a UFC fighter with it in training.

Anyways I would like to know how to take this weapon away, as it’s probably the most consistently painful strike I’ve ever felt.
I’m especially interested to see how Muay Thai fighters deal with something like this

(Not necessarily looking to catch and counter though, it’s almost impossible to catch since it’s only when I’m moving forward)

 

[SandaKicker]

Saenchai has a very good rear leg front kick, that he uses quite a lot.

He has problems with the TMA side kick thrown by Wei here.



You could also try mixing in the Thai side kick if you don’t like the TMA side kick.



Either is effective in orthodox vs southpaw matches.

That’s one of the only techniques you can really land whilst staying outside the range of his rear leg front kick and circling away from it.

 

[AndyMaBobs]

Lateral movement shuts down linear kicks. If you have good circular movement, his effectiveness with the kick will dwindle. That's more important than any specific technique to counter it, just move left and right and circle more, and work on being harder to predict and time.

I'd suggest a teep, but I could see you having trouble with that technique because of your style, which from the fights I've seen tends to be a bit more crouched.



These should work for you though.

 

[rmongler]

I have a taller, southpaw training partner who is very good at using his rear leg to front kick the body. It only takes about 2-3 for me to get very hurt to the body, as he only throws it when I’m closing distance. He’s actually finished multiple training partners including me and a UFC fighter with it in training.

Anyways I would like to know how to take this weapon away, as it’s probably the most consistently painful strike I’ve ever felt.
I’m especially interested to see how Muay Thai fighters deal with something like this

(Not necessarily looking to catch and counter though, it’s almost impossible to catch since it’s only when I’m moving forward)

If he always throws it when you move forward, then clearly thats the best time to anticipate him and catch and sweep.

 

[biscuitsbrah]

If he always throws it when you move forward, then clearly thats the best time to anticipate him and catch and sweep.

Thats true. The way he throws it is not like a teep though. He actually pulls his hips back and then throws it like a karate front kick. Its very hard to catch and hes aware of it because we are doing mma sparring.
What Andy said about footwork seems to be mostly true. Also i feel like instead of leaping forward to cover distance I have to plod forward a little more to see the strike. Which means ill probably get boxed more in the head, but thats ok. Gotta work my boxing defense

 

[II Muchetto II]

Sounds like it's more of a snap front kick more than a push. They can really dig into the body without pushing you back.

A good way of defending this is just to slide back, just enough so that you evade without taking yourself to far out, if he puts his kicking leg down in front of him instead of drawing it back you can counter with a quick low kick before he drags it back. You can also scoop with your front hand (as he is southpaw this will take you to his outside) then return with a low kick to the back of his leg if your scoop off balances his stance.

The snap type kicks are hard to catch and difficult do work around by side stepping. if they are a good kicker they will likely adjust it as you try to move laterally. But it is always good to move sideways from linear attacks like a previous poster has said. I would say, move right, while scooping with your left.

 

[aerius]

Couple ways to deal with it, and the good news is you can make them work together. First option is to attack him with a longer range strike, I have a TKD background so my preference is the front leg side kick. You don't have to load up on the kick and try to drill him off his feet, rather, the emphasis should be more on speed and hitting him just hard enough to disrupt his balance so he can't throw something back at you.

The other option is feinting him with your feet and body. Nong-O (black & red shorts) demonstrates a nice way of doing it in the video below. He drops his level as if he's going to lunge in with something, but he doesn't, then he fakes it again before using the same motion to step in with a round kick. Then he adds in the front leg bounce, steps in & out, and combines it with the level change to setup his next kicks. All the starting motions look the same so it's hard to read when he's actually going to kick until it's on its way.



Once you get the feints working, you can also use them to setup your front leg side kick in addition to your rear leg round kick, and if you can start hitting him with both kicks it also sets up entries for punches. If you watch the above fight all the way through you can see Nong-O constantly building different sequences off of his feints as the fight goes on, and you get an idea of how everything fits together.

 

[rmongler]

Thats true. The way he throws it is not like a teep though. He actually pulls his hips back and then throws it like a karate front kick. Its very hard to catch and hes aware of it because we are doing mma sparring.
What Andy said about footwork seems to be mostly true. Also i feel like instead of leaping forward to cover distance I have to plod forward a little more to see the strike. Which means ill probably get boxed more in the head, but thats ok. Gotta work my boxing defense

It was also hinting at a somewhat broader point:

(Not necessarily looking to catch and counter though, it’s almost impossible to catch since it’s only when I’m moving forward)

'I cant do thing because he only kicks me at the right time to kick me'; why does he always know the right time to kick you?

 

[tekkenfan]

I have a taller, southpaw training partner who is very good at using his rear leg to front kick the body. It only takes about 2-3 for me to get very hurt to the body, as he only throws it when I’m closing distance. He’s actually finished multiple training partners including me and a UFC fighter with it in training.

Anyways I would like to know how to take this weapon away, as it’s probably the most consistently painful strike I’ve ever felt.
I’m especially interested to see how Muay Thai fighters deal with something like this

(Not necessarily looking to catch and counter though, it’s almost impossible to catch since it’s only when I’m moving forward)

wrestle fuck him

 

[tekkenfan]

Saenchai has a very good rear leg front kick, that he uses quite a lot.

He has problems with the TMA side kick thrown by Wei here.



You could also try mixing in the Thai side kick if you don’t like the TMA side kick.



Either is effective in orthodox vs southpaw matches.

That’s one of the only techniques you can really land whilst staying outside the range of his rear leg front kick and circling away from it.

alan belcher showed me this he completely throws just this instead of teeps

 

[vladimirvlad]

Kick him to the lead leg and he'll go down, or move your stomach backward and counter him. If he counters then you must feint him before you attack, when he misses teach him a lesson.

 

[Minnja]

I sparred against two people like this last night but they mostly would use their front leg to either do a snap kick to the body or teep. Shit was super annoying lmao. One of them was about my height/reach but he was also throwing it a bit hard, I had a tough time dealing with it. I could avoid it but it was hard to counter it. The other person is much taller than me but what I started doing was catching it and throwing a cross/overhand. If I didn't react in time to catch it I would try to block or avoid it and then throw a body kick if they were a little off balance. But yeah, I also definitley need to work on countering it more because it was really frustrating to deal with lol

 

[j123]

Anyways I would like to know how to take this weapon away, as it’s probably the most consistently painful strike I’ve ever felt.

Break his leg in the locker room. Use a baseball bat, they're cheap, they get the job done, and you can return it to Walmart / sportcheck / dicks using their 30-90 day return policy.

 

[Lucas Coradini]

I sparred a tkd black belt once and his front kick was hell to deal with

I suggest you feint A LOT to draw it and then parry it to take an angle but also turn your body, so if it goes through your parry you can get the same effect