Defend And Attack With Rafael Cordeiro

It’s comparatively easy to defend against shots when you are on the outside and not throwing anything yourself. It’s much harder to block against shots when you’ve just thrown something or are in the middle of a combination. Not just because you are focused on throwing your own strikes but because when you open up to strike there are inherent openings that your opponent may be able to exploit. 

This is why it’s important to know how to be defensively responsible, especially during and after you throw shots. This way you are prepared to defend against any counters that your opponent throws. 

In this video, Rafael Cordeiro shows a drill/combination to make sure that you are ready to defend yourself even after striking or in mid combination. Rafael Cordeiro is a legendary Muay Thai and overall striking coach. Rafael has worked with legendary fighters like Wanderlei Silva, Lyoto Machida and Rafael Dos Anjos. 

The drill is very simple but it teaches you to be ready for a common counter. The fighter doing the drill first throws a jab, nice and long. This means that you are getting full extension on your punch and keeping your opponent on the end of your range. 

Now a very common counter to a jab, especially to a fighter with a long one and uses it often, is a rear hand. This is usually an overhand, so you need to be ready to defend against that. After throwing your jab, you are going to return your hands to your head like normal and your partner is going to throw a rear overhand or rear hook. 

You are going to see this strike and block accordingly. This means bringing your lead hand to your ear as if you were on the phone. You should also dip your weight downward slightly ,as if starting to squat. This will help you make sure sure that you aren’t knocked off balance or even knocked down because you are grounded to the floor. Doing this will also make it easy to throw the follow up technique. 

After successfully blocking your opponent’s counter, coach Cordeiro has his fighter come in with a lead elbow off of the same arm that just blocked. Doing this capitalizes off of the openings that your opponent made, which is what they just tried to do to you. 

The elbow that coach Cordeiro has his fighter use is a horizontal elbow. If your opponent is able to bring their rear hand back to their head quickly, you might not be fast enough to land that elbow. If you feel like this is going to be the case You can try what is known as a vertical elbow. This elbow comes straight up from your guard or even from the blocking position. It is not as powerful and is less likely to cause a cut, but it is much faster. 

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