What do you guys do to defend against shin kicks? Step over them? Move back? Just condition your shins? It's not something that's really in my style - or at least, I haven't gotten to it yet. edit: BTW, I mean kicks to the shin or lower leg, not kicks with the shin.
I'll give you the Muay Thai versions: 1) Move out of Range - Rely on footwork and move on the balls of your feet. You simply move of out of range. It sounds basic - because it is... so many people attempt to throw shin kicks from the wrong range... so by simply moving backward you can many times easily move out of range. 2) Leg Check - A classic Muay Thai move. (For this example were assuming both fighters are orthodox stance) When your opponent throws a low roundhouse hoping to catch you anywhere below the hip (the thigh, outside of the knee, side of the calf muscle) then you can leg check them. If it's orthodox stance then it will most likely be your opponents rear leg he's kicking with.. and your left front leg your checking his kick with. You left fist/glove stays up over your tucked chin, your right hand comes out straight in front of your with the palm up - preferabley right in the opponents face, and your knee then comes up with your toes pointing downards at slight outward angle from your body to meet his incoming shin kick. Obviously this is where sin conditioning comes into play. Your left leg with be somewhere between 10 and 11 o'clock so as to catch the arc of his kick.. there is no point in brining the knee straight up and gettting kicked in the side of the shin anyhow. The hands are in the postions to 1) protect your jaw with the left 2) to keep your opponent from getting any closer with your right, and to block his line of sight for your counter. The shin to shin contact will always hurt - even after conditioning but if you've conditioned it properly you will have increased your pain threshold enough to deal with most kicks. It's imperative that you check his kick before it gets mid-arc... stopping him from developing full power. You want to get your leg check off before he gets his kick to mid arc. Your shins will thank you. The ideal follow up to this is directly after the check to touch the ball of your checking leg quickly down to the canvas and then fire a roundhouse of your own... or two. One important factor so many people forget, you want to check kicks with a stone face...even if it hurts like a mo-fo you don't want to give your opponent any indication he's hurt or annoyed you. Keeping stone faced will unsettle your opponent and can give you an edge psychologically. 3) Get off first and land first Again assuming orthodox stance.. if you get off before you opponent and land... the power of his kick will be greatly diminished and will leave you with a good opening for follow ups. If you fire your forward leg you can aim for the inside of his forward knee, since all his body weight is on it will buckle fairly easily if you catch it direct and fast. You can also fire your back leg but you have to get off first... or at leat be faster... much faster. You don't want to stand there and trade kicks, you want to move out of range, get off before your opponent, or check his kick before it builds to full power and respond with some kind of combo - all while keeping a stone face. There are dozens of variations on this very basic leg check.... one that is great is a left cross check with a right cross. The effectiveness for checking kicks comes from time on the heavy bag conditioing the shins, live sparring to improve response time, and static drills to engrain into muslce memory the mechanics of the leg check... topped of by keeping the pyschological strategy in mind of keeping a stone face. Most people that don't train Muay Thai have a slim realistic chance of checking a low roundhouse kick. By checking it I mean checking it in the proper way... not just taking it. Even if they manage to check it with mechanically fundamental propers but without the proper shin conditioning they can still go down easily... even Muay Thai fighters with top conditioning have still had trouble to check heavy low roundhouses. I ended up with a indent in my left shin from a heavy kick that I could rest a dime in... lol... took forever to peen the rest of my shin bone to that level. Hope that's some info you can use.
Just to add onto that, your foot doesnt need to be down when checking a kick, the more up it is, the more the muscle on the front of your shin absorbs the impact
Which to my way of training... is exactly what you DON'T want. Why stick soft muscle tissue in the way a hard oncoming shin?! You don't hit the heavy bag to condition the two most prominent muscles on the front portion of the shin (tibialis anterior and extensor digitorum longus). So why would you want to receive a kick right on the muscle? Much of the focus of your heavy bag work should be to condition the shin bone (tibia) - the result of this is ossification - or the strengthening of the bone (from the marrow side out). The other issue that I have with this is that you risk getting your toes kicked into the joints... a stub extraordinaire. If I see an opponent keeping there toes up on a leg check I will make a point to try and kick their toes back up into their ankle. Try it some time... see how long you can continue to put weight on that foot after they've been kicked full force.
Let me ask you this, would you rather be kicked on yoru quads muscle or on the femur bone itself? The muscle infront of the shin helps absorb impact cuasing less damage to the bone And as for kicking someone toes, please, you throw a round house to their leg, it isnt you kicking their toes, but them putting their toes in the way of you kick, which i have never seen happen
lol. What?! Is your anterior muscle now somehow disconnected from your nervous system that you haven't got to deal with swelling and pain from a kick to soft muscle tissue somehow? your analogy is weak. It's not about your quad muscle or your femur.. it's about your tibia and tibialis anterior and extensor digitorum longus muscles. No need to bring another bone or muscle group into it. If what your argueing is that the muscle is protecting the bone from impact then why not just let them land the kick?! In fact don't turn your leg out when you go to check just bring it the knee straight up and let them blast you on the side of your calf... more padding and all right!? In fact why check at all just let them hammer away at your quads. lol. Great technique. From your response it sounds as if you either haven't been in many full Muay Thai rules matches or haven't had the pleasure of someone catching your toes by leaving them up. It ain't rocket science.... but hey knock yourself out.
has samkor been in any muay thai full contact fights slipthejab? becuase he seems to check low kicks with his foot up does nontachai know how to fight in muay thai becuase he also checks with his foot up i cant explain why other than what ive posted, but alot of top fighters who are probably better then you and been in more full Muay Thai rule matches then you check legs with there feet up
Lift your knee up, toes pointing down, and absorb the blow. It'll either miss (because your shin is elevated) or it'll hit your leg if misthrown (but your leg is in a defensive posture, able & ready to take the hit). Try conditioning your shins by hitting the heavy bag & MT pads and then rub the Thai liniment (or something similar) afterwards. Those are the striking areas in MT, afterall, as opposed to the feet which are the norm in other martial arts. Good luck in your training.
in total agreement with Nforce. foot up that muscle infront of the shin helps alot... pure shin to shin.... wow that sounds devestating and i can see how as uv said your shin was indented... not a good idea...
Thanks for the responses everyone. I could see it going either way with the foot - foot up, more muscle covering, which gives the shin more time to decellerate, and there's less overall force against your shin. On the other hand, it's still going to hurt you, but probably not hurt the other guy at all. I would think the location on the shin makes a big difference, too, since the part near the foot, at least on me, is a lot more sensative than the part in the middle.
different people do it different ways, i just didnt like slipthejabs mentality that there was only 1 correct way to do it and that was feet down, becuase from what ive seen most fighters have it up
The old style never uses leg checks...rather you can employ techniques to slip, evade, catch, intercept or even leap over the kicks.
In terms of shielding, I'm a "toes up, shin towards kick" kind of guy. However, I'd much rather evade the kick that block it.
