How To Pivot Counter With Daniel Woirin
We all know that footwork is important. It’s how to get into range to strike and it’s how you get out of range so that you can stay safe. For the most part when people think of training footwork, they think of things like agility ladders and jumping rope. While those things are good for warm ups, for the most part the footwork trained when using those things doesn’t really transfer well to the footwork that is done when you’re moving around in your stance.
What you want to work on is the footwork that you will actually use in your stance. One of the more complicated footwork techniques is pivoting. You might be thinking that pivoting isn’t that complicated and the actual movement part of the pivot isn’t. Making the pivot effective and being able to work off of it is what is hard.
So we’ve brought in an MMA coach that has worked with a ton of high level fighters to show you how it's done.
In this video, coach Daniel Woirin goes over how you can properly implement the pivot into your game.
Who Is Daniel Woirin
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!
How To Pivot Into A Counter
The video starts off with coach Woirin talking about how to properly pivot. You don’t just want to pivot in place. This way you will still just be in front of your opponent but you won’t be facing them, so you’ll just be putting yourself in danger.
What you need to do and what coach Woirin shows is that you need to step to the outside first if you want to pivot to the outside. This way you get a better angle on your opponent and also stay out of their line of fire.
If you want to pivot in the other direction that's just a little bit more complicated. If you want to pivot to what is your inside you’re going to take a step out with your back leg to the side. From there you are going to pivot your lead leg around so you end up in the opposite stance to the one you started in.
Either way you decide to pivot you should be looking at the side of your opponent's head, at least for a second.
You can use this pivot footwork to help stay out of the way of an aggressive opponent’s punches.When your opponent comes forward, just pivot outside to keep yourself out of their line of fire. You are also in a prime angle to throw some strikes.
What you want to do after pivoting and getting that strong angle is get a hand on your opponent. You want to just rframe and not punch, this will let you check your distance. You can even put out this frame while you’re pivoting. Off of that frame you can start to throw your attacks.
The attacks can really be whatever you want. If you frame off of your lead hand like coach Woirin does in the video, then your rear side strikes are loaded up for you. This means that things like rear kicks to the body and rear straights are a solid option.
You can even go into combinations off of the pivot because so many options are open to you. You are also in a prime angle to land a shot on your opponent's jaw, which can very easily KO them.
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