Use This Brutal Knee Set Up Off Of A Fake Punch With Jean Charles Skarbowsky
If you train, you know how good it feels to throw a great feint that results in landing a powerful strike. Feints must be believable to be effective, and this often takes a lot of setting up throughout the fight. Giving your opponent different looks, making them believe they know what is coming.
One of the more popular and effective kinds of feints is to fake a punch and landing a strike with the legs. It involves quick level changes which can be hard to defend against. In addition to kicks, using the knees is a great and extremely damaging option.
There aren't many shots that are worse to take than a knee to the solar plexus. It hurts terribly, and often causes your opponent to drop their hands, opening themselves up to take strikes to the head. You do have to be careful especially when throwing a flying knee because you are entering into the pocket and place yourself open to being hit as well.
In this video, Jean Charles Skarbowsky demonstrates an awesome variation of throwing a fake punch into a flying knee, off of catching your opponent's kick. Check It out below!
The Technique
In this variation, Jean Charles is working off of catching his opponents roundhouse kick. In this scenario, his opponent can only strike with his hands because one of his legs is captured. However, Jean Charles has the ability to strike with both his hands and legs.
When you catch your opponent's kick, it is likely that one of the first things they are going to do is start punching you in the head as you only have one arm to protect yourself and they want to do whatever they can to free their leg. With that being said, you will need to operate quickly with this technique to start striking before your opponent, giving them only the choice to protect themselves rather than to strike.
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Immediately after catching your opponent's kick, lean back and place your head further away from them. This both gives you some more room to operate with, and makes getting hit in the head less likely. As soon as you create some space there, load up a big right cross.
As you load up this big right hand, one of two things are going to happen. Either your partner is not going to protect their head and you can go in and land a nice punch, or they are going to choose to use their hands to protect themselves. The second option is definitely more likely.
As your partner goes to protect themselves, he is now occupying both of his arms, and one of his legs is still captured by you. This does not leave him very many options. Start throwing that right hand and just before you connect, ditch the punch, drop his leg that you had trapped, and finish with a flying right knee into his solar plexus.
As you lean back to load up your right hand, you are simultaneously loading up your right leg. As you ditch the punch at the last second, you are transferring all of that momentum from your right arm into your right leg, making an extremely powerful flying knee. Waiting until the last second to fake the punch ensures that your opponent will not have time to drop his guard to defend against the knee instead of the punch.
This is a technique that can be easily set up throughout a fight. Maybe you catch a few of your opponents roundhouse kicks first, trying to sweep him initially or just land punches. After doing this a few times, he is going to start expecting what will come next, and this is the perfect opportunity to land this devastating flying knee.
About Jean Charles Skarbowsky
Jean Charles Skarbowsky is a French kickboxer and three-time European Muay Thai Champion. After a successful start to his career in the 1990’s, he sustained an injury which kept him out of the sport for a few years. After healing, he picked up right where he left off, returning to the highest of levels despite the doctor's prognosis.
Jean Charles has transitioned into the role of a coach in more recent days. He appeared on the twelfth season of The Ultimate Fighter as a Muay Thai coach for Georges St. Pierre’s team. In sparring with the fighters on the show, people were amazed at his level of skill and technique against the up and coming fighters in the sport.
About Jean Charles’ Instructional
Jean Charles has devoted this instructional to advanced Muay Thai techniques. Included you will find moves such as leg grabs and counters, strategy and advice, Muay Pam, distance and footwork, and many other high level techniques.
Jean Charles has been a huge name in Muay Thai and MMA for a very long time. He is known to be particularly unique, and he possesses some of the best technique in the sport. Propel your Muay Thai game to the highest of levels by using all of this advanced technique, check out his instructional here!