Using The Crossout After A Back Kick With Raymond Daniels
Defensive footwork is an essential skill to develop as a martial artist, as our feet will take us wherever we want and keep us safe if used currently. We have different ways of using defensive footwork. We can use it to maintain distance and deny our opponent any way to get close to us, or we can use it to get out of an undesirable position quickly.
A fighter who can use his footwork effectively will have a chance against the most formidable opponents; most of us heard that saying in the dojo, and this is true. When you can move your feet quickly and correctly, most opponents won’t be able to chase you down or avoid you if you are the aggressor.
The problem many fighters have is that they are moving their feet unconsciously; this leads to many small mistakes in managing our footwork and putting ourselves in the wrong position. We must understand that “footwork” is a vast subject, and for every move we want to perform, there is a specific way of moving our feet.
We can solve this problem by learning the correct way to move for every situation and drill it. Let’s look at some examples from different martial arts so we can understand this better:
- Boxing - L step - when I want to cut the ring to the right (as an orthodox) ill throw the jab and an L step behind it
- Muay Thai - pulling the lead leg - When I want to move away from a low kick ill pull my leg into a square stance, and from there ill be able to move in all directions
- Karate - crossout - as we can see in the following video, the crossout allows us to throw a back kick and come back to our stance in the long-range
In this video, Raymond Daniels will show us how he uses a crossout to maintain distance after a kick.
Who Is Raymond Daniels?
Raymond Daniels is aMixed Martial Artist and Kickboxer. Raymond grew up in traditional martial arts and won multiple world titles in karate, kickboxing, and accomplished taekwondo. Nowadays, Raymond Daniels competes for Bellator MMA and Bellator Kickboxing at the age of 41, and he is known for his flashy fighting style and dangerous knockout abilities.
Check Out Art Of The Spin Volume 1, Click Learn More!
Crossout After A Kick
Raymond starts the video by explaining to us why we want to use the crossout after the back kick. The reason behind the crossout is that when we land our kick, we want to be back at stance while maintaining the proper amount of space; we never want to be jammed with our opponents where he can start working his combinations.
Remember, “space is our best friend when it comes to fighting” a fighter that can understand this principle will have a long and safe career in the fight game.
So let’s go over the crossout; as we are in our stance, shifting our hips and throwing the back kick, I want to retract my kicking foot in front of my rear foot, so we are crossing them, and as we back step, we come back to our fighting stance.
Notice that I never cross-step behind my leg as this will put me in an unstable position and out of position, which can be very dangerous against an aggressive opponent that will push forward and break our balance completely.
Raymond reminds us that we always want to work both sides when we work our techniques, so we don’t have a weak side. We can do a drill to get better at the crossout to perform a back kick three times on each side and use the crossout quickly after each one to get back into fighting stance.
Learn More From Raymond Daniels
As we saw, the ability to use the correct footwork after the back kick is important, but if you want to learn the whole system behind Raymond’s back kicks, check out - “The art of the spin kick VOLUME 1 by Raymond Daniels” available exclusively; on Dynamic Striking!