Mixing Our Attacks With Kirian Fitzgibbons
Mixed martial arts has brought a new idea to fighting - mixing the different disciplines to create a unique style for every fighter. Although it wasn’t always this way, in the beginning, the idea was to check which martial art worked best by putting athletes from different disciplines against each other.
But as the sport grew more prominent and older, fighters understood that no one style could work in a game where you cannot predict the style you will face. So MMA pushed to develop a unique system for every fighter composed of different abilities from various martial arts.
By being creative, we have unlimited options to mix things up; let’s look at some examples:
- Boxing and wrestling ( Jab - Double leg)
- Boxing and BJJ ( Jab to the body - Imanari roll)
- Wrestling and BJJ (Double leg - Ashi garami slide)
- Boxing and Taekwando (Left hook - Spinning back kick)
Many people face a problem when trying to mix everything because they try to perform techniques separately; for example, athletes will use their boxing to throw a combination and then stop before moving to a different attack like a kick or even a takedown.
Stopping after each attack will give our opponent a lot of time to react, which we cannot allow; we want to move flawlessly between the different attacks making it look like a single sequence instead of separated attacks.
The solution to this requires two things - creativity and repetition; once we found a sequence that will work for us, we need to drill it as one movement to create a motor program in our brain that will serve us in a fight when it’s time to use it.
In this video, Kirian Fitzgibbons will show us a drill we can use to mix our punches and kicks as reactions to our opponent’s attacks.
Who Is Kirian Fitzgibbons
Kirian is a well-known coach in the world of MMA; he specializes in the striking arts and has his own MMA gym in California - CSA gym. Kirian developed many athletes to become stars in Kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA through the years. As a result, we can find great fighters like Gaston Bolanos, known for his vicious spinning elbows as a professional fighter at Bellator MMA and Kickboxing.
Drills To Mix Boxing With Kicks
In this video, Kirian is going to show us how to mix our boxing and kicks. We are going to build a system to react to every punch our opponent can throw at us with punches and kicks; it doesn’t matter what kick you are going to use as long as you use them in the drill, but as a starter low kicks are our best option to make the exercise easier.
What we're going to do is we're going to work with the format; this format will be the structure we use in order to mix all our strikes as a reaction, it doesn't matter which style we employ in the drill as long as we are using it in the format shown we're good to go.
This format will have 14 points, meaning we will have 14 types of reactions for different punches the opponent will throw at us with a structure that goes like this: defensive maneuver - 2 punches - one kick.
Let's look at all the reactions we are going to drill (we can change the strikes as long as we keep the same structure):
Evasions
- slip the jab - counter cross - hook - kick
- slip the cross - counter hook - cross - kick
- pull - cross - hook - kick
- duck - hook - cross - kick
Reaction to hooks
- bob under left hook - cross - hook - kick
- Bob under right hook - Hook - Cross - Kick
- Block left hook to the body - Right uppercut - Hook - Kick
- Block right hook to the body - Left uppercut - Hook- Kick
- Block left hook to the head - Hook - Cross - Kick
- Block right hook to the head - Cross- Hook- Kick
Reactions to straight punches
- Parry jab to the body - Hook - Cross - Kick
- Parry cross to the body - Cross - Hook - Kick
- Parry jab to the head - Cross - Hook - Kick
- Parry cross to the head - Hook - Cross - Kick
As you get better at the drill, Kirian advises us to take the structure of the exercise and change the techniques used in it so that we can implement it to our own game, this drill is simple, and where you take it is totally up to you.
Learn More From Kirian Fitzgibbons
