Head Kick Over The Opponent's Defending Hand With Marlon Moraes

For every strike, you need to have setups before it lands. The strike usually lands for reasons that happen before the strike lands, especially knockouts. The head kick is not different. You can not just land the high kick by throwing it hard and hoping it will land. And high kicks are great because you don't need much forcing to knock someone out just placement of the leg on the head. For a basic setup to land a high kick, Marlon Moraes shows an excellent way to use the opponent's defense against them to land the head kick. Marlon Moraes has a good reputation for knocking people out with high kicks

Marlon Moraes

Marlon Moraes is a former UFC bantamweight title contender. He is known for his speed, striking and explosiveness. He has been training Muay Thai from a very young age. He loves knockouts especially with his kicks. He has a knockout win with a switch kick over Alijmain Sterling the current champion as of thee writing blog.

Marlon starts by saying he loves knockouts and specifically ones he can rely on. Head kicks are a great way to knock someone out as you don't need much force but putting your shin on their head/neck. The idea is to have their hands down and leave an opening for their head while also not seeing the kick coming as you don't know what knocks you out.

The Drill Breakdown

So the drill is throwing a 1-2-Right High Kick. Marlon says if you are fighting a competent striker, chances are they will defend straight punches by parrying the punches away. This works well because their head is open from their hand being occupied by defending your punch. Parrying is when a fighter defends a punch with an open palm into the puncher's side of the wrist and deflects it's trajectory. It's a good defense as it takes away force and you will not feel the power of the punch, unlike a high guard block.

Many fighters are used to seeing punches followed up by kicks from the opposite side as opposed to the same side. If you end with a right punch, you throw a left kick and vice versa. Your right hand being pulled down from the parry gives a clear path for that kick to land. It takes a lot of balance and core engagement to land this effectively. The following key for this technique is to kick when the right arm is already on the opponent's parry hand, not the punch, then kick. That takes too much time, and you need their hand occupied

Technique Summary 

• Throw 1-2 and observe if the opponent is parrying
• Keep the right hand on the opponent's hand to occupy it
• Kick high without bringing the hand back to avoid that split second where they can defend

Marlon’s Instructional

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