Drill This Level Change From Daniel Woirin

Level changing is a part of all combat sports, whether they’re grappling or striking based. If you're a grappler, level changing helps get you into the proper position for trips, throws, sweeps and takedowns. There are entire game plans and sequences built around level changes in grappling. In striking, there is less of a system built around level changes. In striking level changes are mainly used to land one quick shot or to break up the rhythm of a combination. This isn't a bad thing, it's just that there is a lot more that you can do with level changes. 

Level changes should be a bigger part of your game if you're a striker, not just to land a quick shot but to help set up your fight ending ones as well. Changing levels can also help for defense, to get you out of the way of your opponents shots but today we are going to focus on using level changes in a way that you probably haven’t thought of before.

In this video, Daniel Woirin goes over how to use level changes as fients to set up strikes to the head. Daniel Woirin is a french MMA coach and former coach at the legendary Black House Gym, Daniel has helped some of the very best strikers in MMA including Anderson Silva!

 The video starts off with coach Daniel talking about how he learned how to level change from wrestling and how he adapted it to striking, mainly to help land bigger shots. For this drill, coach Daniel shows level changing as mere squatting straight down. Make sure that you don’t lean over yourself. You always want to be over your own hips to maintain a solid position to throw and take strikes. 

When you squat down and level change, your opponent is almost guaranteed to react. This will either have them level change to match your level, block to their body, which opens them up to a shot to the head or your opponent might even just sprawl if you’ve been shooting for a lot of takedowns. 

Once you squat down, and get the reaction that you want, now you can work off of it. If your opponent drops their hands, they are now wide open for any shots to the head that you want. In the video coach Woirin goes over how you can level change into a jab cross and lead high kick. He also goes over a few combinations that you can try. Since this is more of an opponent ended concept rather than a straight up technique, go for whatever combination that you like. 

Make sure that you are level changing at a safe distance. If you level change too close to your opponent, there is a good chance that eventually you'll end up eating a knee or a kick to the face. This is why coach Woirin says to level change at jab distance, which he considers safe. 

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