How To Set Up The Flying Knee With Alex Exsisto
The flying knee is one of the most exciting strikes to use in Muay Thai. Although it looks cool, it is also a devastating strike that can put any fighter out. The flying knee is similar to the straight knee but with an additional jump to it.
We will primarily use the flying knee against an off-balanced opponent in Muay Thai, and it will look like rushing forward with a jump onto the opponent’s head or body. Still, there are many variations for the flying knee as it can be thrown against a rushing opponent where he runs straight into the knee.
The problem most fighters face when throwing the knee is that they are mentally afraid to jump with a strike as it seems too risky for them, but with the proper technique, we can throw the flying knee with no risk of off-balance and missing our target.
Let’s look now at the steps needed to throw the classic flying knee:
- Stay in the striking range
- Bend your knees slightly and jump upwards into the target
- Switch your hips mid-air
- When you are at the highest point of the jump, throw the knee
- Keep your guard up while jumping and landing from the strike staying safe and ready
In this video, Alex Exsisto will show us how he sets up the flying knee to land it consistently.
Who Is Alex Exsisto?
Alex Exsisto is Muay Thai coach at Jackson Wink MMA. Alex started his professional Muay Thai career early in Thailand, Bangkok, where he was a part of the Jockygym camp, well known for its legendary fighters, most famous among them is Saenchai. Alex began his coaching career as a pad holder across Thailand until he relocated back to the USA, where he has become a part of Jackson Wink MMA stuff and enjoys working with the elite fighters.
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Landing The Flying Knee
The video starts with Alex preparing us for what we will see in this video; as we will work the flying knee, which is an exciting strike to throw, Alex reminds us that this is only the fun stuff.
Alex gives us the analogy of the sprinkles and the cupcake to better understand the importance of a flying knee. “People like the sprinkles, but the sprinkles alone are not satisfying; we must put them on the cupcake to make them attractive - Remember sprinkles go with stuff; they are never the main meal!”.
We can understand from this analogy that everybody wants to do the cool stuff, but without the fundamental and boring techniques, there is no place for flashy and exciting strikes.
So in this video, we are going to learn a setup for the flying knee. Flying knees are fun and devastating; if we can figure out how to land them consistently, they can be a very effective tool in our arsenal.
The most simple setup we can use for the flying knee will include baiting our opponent. When we bait our opponent, we must set his patterns our self, so he reacts the way we want as we switch for something else, in our case - The Flying Knee.
The setup we will look at was taken directly from “Iron” Mike Zambidis, and it goes like this:
- Throw an overhand to make him bite on hit
- Repeat, so you create a pattern he will react too
- Stop the overhand mid-air and switch for the flying knee
Remember, Mike was a short guy, and he was still able to get his knees high enough to land them on his opponent’s face regularly, utilizing different variations, and one of them is the setup we saw right now.
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