Simple Drill To Make Your Defensive Back Kick Better With Raymond Daniels

The usage of the back kick can be seen in many ways, both offensively and defensively. Although many people see it mainly as an offensive weapon because of the exposure it got from many knockouts in various competitions.

In reality, traditional martial arts created the back kicks to deal with many attacks as a defensive maneuver by spinning away from the direction of the attack and kicking backward at the opening made, stopping him from taking our back and doing a lot of damage.

Once we understand that the back kick has a defensive element to it, we need to understand it’s a reactive strike, which means timing and speed are essential factors in its development. Reaction time can get better with many fundamental drills, like shown in the following video.

Some examples of using the defensive back kick:

1. Countering round kicks - martial artists can use the spinning back kick against the round kick
2. Dealing with rushers - opponent rushing in as we retreat with a cross-step (lead leg steps behind the back foot) to a back kick
3. off the break - as we manage to break from a clinch, most opponents react by trying to clinch again - this is where we catch them with the spin back kick

Who Is Raymond Daniels

Raymond Daniels is a very decorated martial artist. He earned black belts in multiple traditional martial arts, including American Kenpo, Karate, Tae Kwon do, where he managed to compete at a world championship level.

Daniels then transitioned to kickboxing, where he became a world champion in 2015; Daniels now fights for Bellator MMA and kickboxing as a professional fighter at 41. This man has dedicated his life to the fight game. He is considered by many as one of the most exciting fighters to watch. 

 In this video, Raymond Daniels shows us a basic drill to improve our explosiveness and reaction with the spin back kick.

Drill To Improve The Defensive Back Kick 

The video starts with Raymond introducing us to a simple drill we can do to improve our back kicks; notice that you might have already seen or even done this drill if you came from any traditional martial art.

This drill's primary goal is to develop explosive power and to do that, we need to work from the ground up. We start by putting ourselves in the correct position for the drill, and we’re going to stand straight in our fighting stance and lower our back knee down to the mat.

While performing the drill, we intend to push and explode up consciously off our lead leg, and as we come up, we’re going to stand up into a position where our back foot and hips are pointing away.

Now we’re going to lean our weight over our back foot, straightening our lead leg and pointing our knee to the ground as we perform the back kick. When I come back, I use a cross-step where my kicking foot lands behind my back leg and the back foot steps back again, bringing me back into my fighting stance.

To sum up, the drill lets go over the steps again:

• Start in a fighting stance lowering our  back knee to the ground
• Exploded up with hips and back foot turned away
• Throw the back kick
• Finish with a cross step 

As we become better at the drill, we should perform all the movements simultaneously in an explosive manner; the next thing we want to add is switching sides to get used to the move both ways.

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