How to Practice Kickboxing Moves

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody I'm John Graden from the Martial Arts Teacher's Association and johngraden.com. How do you practice your kickboxing moves? That's a great question. As a kickboxer this is one I'm particularly fond of. Here is a common mistake that people make when they are dong their kickboxing moves. If I am hitting the bag or I'm doing the targets most beginners will try and power every single move. They'll try and slam the bag every move and what happens when you do that is one, you waste a lot of energy, two, you tense the body up, three you tend to run out of gas faster. You don't typically spar like that or fight like that in a match so you want to train like you fight in a match and how is that? I'll have techniques that I'm just going to snap and I'm just going to pop out there so I might go snap, snap, snap, snap, snap and about every seventh or eight go pow, pow, pow, pow, pow and then I recover. Pow, pow, pow, pow so I'm mixing my snapping my speed techniques with my power techniques, two, every time you step in and every time you throw a technique you want to make sure you're penetrating with your footwork and you are not standing in one spot digging a hole. Every time you throw your reverse move you always close the gap on your opponent, come in, engage, and then clear step out, re-open the gap with a clearing technique, I like to clear with a jab or I'll clear with the front leg round kick. So I engage, step in, fire, fire, fire, clear and then here is the biggy, change my alignment on the bag or the target and then repeat the process. So we are mixing our snapping techniques not just doing power all the time, two, every attack penetrating footwork, engage, clearing footwork, change your alignment that's always the pattern. Penetrate, engage, clear, change your alignment, penetrate, engage, clear, change your alignment. Make sure that that is the pattern you are developing in the gym so that when you are in the ring that is how your fight comes out. I'm John Graden. I hope that helps. Thanks very much."