Strong Combination Finishers With Cyrille Diabate
In this video, former UFC and Pride fighter Cyrille Diabate talks about how to add an exclamation point at the end of your combos with a low kick. This is a common tactic that you will see in Muay Thai and Kickboxing and is probably the first thing that they teach you if you take one of those classes, right after teaching you your stance and how to kick.
This is because your punches set up kicks perfectly as your opponent's mind and vision will be occupied with your punches. This will also get your opponent heavy on their feet as they try to hunker down to better absorb the blows that you are delivering making it hard to block even if they have time to notice it to attempt to block your kick.
Ending with a low kick is great for many reasons. Like we just went over, when set up with punches properly, they are basically a free strike. This is a solid score if you are in a competition, especially in Muay Thai where the kicks are valued much more than the punches and thus score more in the eyes of the judges.
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Aside from just scoring points in a competition, landing low kicks just on their own will damage your opponents legs and slow them down and even take some power out of their strikes. This means that if you are facing off against an elusive opponent, kicking their legs will slow them down and take away what is probably one of their strongest abilities in their movement. Kicking their legs will also make it hard to sit down on strikes, meaning they won't be able to put as much power into them, making them a less dangerous opponent.
Cyrille Diabate shows a combination that is built around landing low kicks with the lead leg on both your opponent’s rear legs. This means that not only are you going to be striking at your opponent's leg with your lead leg, which is something a lot of people neglect training but you will also be striking at your opponent's rear leg. The rear leg isn’t often targeted, so your opponent will not be used to defending it. The rear leg is also likely to be less conditioned to taking strikes, meaning that any attacks that you land on it will be more damaging.
The combination that Cyrille Diabate shows is a jab into a rear uppercut to lead hook. Diabate then retracts from the lead hook and frames out, which will occupy his opponents vision and distract them enough for him to land the lead lowkick to the outside of the rear leg. After landing the kick and returning into his stance, Cyrille has his partner throw a rear cross, to which he then slips to the outside of and throws a rear hand of his own. Cyrille then throws another kick to the outside of his opponent's rear leg. This time there is no need to frame out as throwing the right hand perfectly sets you up and balances your weight from the lead kick.
You can also throw the low kicks to the inside of your opponent’s lead leg, which will off balance them. The inside of the lead leg is also usually less conditioned, meaning it is open to more damage. Check out Striking For MMA Today!