09.05.18
Today’s lesson at Kingham Hill School was supposed to address anti-grappling, but I decided to focus on a few striking fundamentals before moving onto this section of the training. We looked at developing power in the straight hand strike, revising pre-emption and recovery before moving onto kicks.
The class warmed up going through the basic postures and transitions off the ground, increasing intensity with each repetition. They then moved onto coaching one another on the focus mitts. We looked at maintaining tactical boundary lines, priming the fence and firing off the pre-emptive strikes with incidental combinations. Here I focused ensuring that everyone was setting realistic boundary lines to better legally justify the pre-emptive and to also ensure that there was no hesitation when that first strike was thrown. We then revised the cover and one student led a demonstration how this could be drilled. Condition white is simulated with one student closing their eyes and the coach using a physical prompt to get them to open their before throwing a barrage of strikes. The student covers, moves into the strikes and returns fire going back to the default striking strategy.
We then began work on kicks. This started with a look at the basic low line round kick. This strike is delivered in a free-flow manner akin to Muay Thai. The striking area is the shin and the target area is pretty much anywhere between the hip and ankle, although lower down the leg is preferable. After targeting we developed force on the Thai pads. Next we went through recovery from an asymmetrical ground assault, moving to a position where they could defend against standing kicks with ground kicks. The round kick is used from a foetal position, side plank position and then a standing position before defaulting back to the straight hand highland strikes and incidental combinations.