Mechanics of Flying Kicks and Kicks with an Advance


Technique Review 

Hi everyone. Welcome to this week’s technique review. When I started spreading Krav Maga in Europe, one of the first countries was Finland.

Video transcript

Hi everyone. Welcome to this week’s technique review. When I started spreading Krav Maga in Europe, one of the first countries was Finland. It was in the mid-90s. Til today, Finland is one of the best branches of KMG with one of the largest number of experts, the capital probably the biggest one. But when I started there they told me, “Please, don’t say that you have jumping kicks or flying kicks in Krav Maga.” Why? People will think, “Come on, Finland, all these icy roads, and who is going to jump? And if I’m gonna jump, I gonna fall and break my head, so we should not have any jumping kicks.” So I never talk about this the first few years when the instructor students used to instruct us. But when you think about it, then I wanted to teach them this, I said, “Half of the year you’ve got ice on the roads, the other half you don’t. It’s reasonable weather.” Maybe half the events are outside, which means 25% of the events you cannot jump. All the rest you can jump, as a joke of course.

But the idea is that sometimes we need to close the gap and sometimes we need even to jump. When would a solider need to jump on somebody? Well it is difference of heights or the trenches. If I can shoot, I’ll shoot. But if I cannot shoot, for whatever reason, I can jump on my enemy and maybe have a knife in my hand. So I’m jumping specific way, grabbing, kicking, attacking, attacking with a weapon. There are specific military techniques related to this. Except of this you think about a civilian who sees a problem and he wants to run and attack the attacker, attack the enemy, attack the aggressor that’s a terrorist. And he’s running, so how to attack a terrorist or attacker or aggressor or criminal when you are running? Well you stop and then do something. So obviously we can jump. And usually it’s a low jump. It’s a big heights difference.

Anyhow, just to understand about some [inaudible] mechanics. When we are standing like this, and I want to advance and kick, what happens? I advance with one leg, and I kick with the other one. That’s a regular stomping step. Yes, I’m at a distance, I’ll kick the bag. I cannot reach the bag. Now I have to advance to kick it. An example, yes?

So from here I advanced. The regular advance, this sort of skipping, stomping step. The other one is suitable for short range at a sliding. We start with the kick, and then advance. Obviously this can be at different distances and directions. That’s the sliding. Before I did the crossing of the legs, the stomping step, I can advance with the front leg and kick with the back leg. I can advance with the back leg and kick with the front leg. These are all possibilities obviously.

What’s the mechanics of this one? You advance again with one leg and kick with the other. This is the moment that I’m in the air. Then kicking, and then advancing. The sliding, this is the moment that I’m sliding gliding, a little bit touching the floor. Most of my weight is in the air. So practically these two are really sort of jumping kicks. If it’s icy roads, it’s very difficult to do. Icy roads, sometimes I don’t even walk well. For fighters, for sure they have to grab and fight. Look at the different ice hockey games how they are fighting there when they fight. So they grab and then they punch because they are on the skates, and they are definitely professional skaters.

But when we are talking about this one, if we are doing that motion, and let’s make the movement a bit higher so a little bit higher. And if we do it a bit higher, it’ll be higher. Practically, this is the jumping kick for the sliding, and the regular jump, meaning push with one leg, kick with the other one. Of course we do one leg, kick with the other one. The regular jump is exactly like the sliding advance. Sliding advance of course is much slower. You can’t really see my head rising when we are doing the stomping advance. We are pushing with the same leg that we are kicking. So I advance with the base leg, push with the kicking leg. And here, you see there was sort of crossing, sort of scissor action. That’s exactly the scissor jump. So look at this one. It was a little bit higher and a little bit higher, and a little bit higher. That’s the idea about, and the comparison between, the advancing kick and the flying or jumping kick. And obviously we can jump. Whatever we do do which with the scissor or the regular jump and two different kicks. We can do for example the roundhouse kicks, the side kick, even the spinning and jumping kicks. So this is the comparison and the similarities between the kicks with advance and the kicks with flying and jumping.

Again, overall, in Krav Maga we’re not searching for high jumps. We’ll jump on the opponent when the opponent is lower. Or if we are running and we need to cover fast distance and we don’t want to stop, obviously we hit, we kick as we run. So almost no change of height much. I remember sometimes ago, there was a terrorist attack people with knife in the streets of Israel. And a soldier or security guy run up after him and after the moment the tourist felt that the officer was close to him and he moved to the side and the officer was running and jumped on him. And he moved and he kicked sideways, exactly the technique that we have in the curriculum of the system. It’s an expert level, but it’s inside our curriculum. Exactly done as we say it should be, meaning you are chasing somebody or you are running towards a target and then you attack while you are in the air. And what’s very important, to be able to continue afterwards. Not to lose your balance, land well, and of course, to do this you have to train. And it elevates not only your body and jumping abilities, but it elevates your kicking and whole body posture and ability to fight. The ability to jump and spring and have explosive power with your motions of kicking and of moving in general.

Thanks for listening and watching. All the best guys. Ciao.

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