How to Take on Leg Kicks in MMA

Whether you are a power punchers or an all star wrestler, you are going to come up against fighters who insist on leading in with kicks. Most kickers in MMA with the exception of fighters like Cung Le have one of two intentions when they kick. First is the intention of kicking your head to knock you out and the second is to weaken your legs which will make you slow and easy to knock down. The knock out kicks is fairly intuitive and easy to block so we will focus this article on the second type of kicking which is to take out the legs.

Learning This Can Save Your Career

It is frankly amazing to see even well rated fighters who appear untrained in how to deflect these blows, specifically from low kicks to the thigh and knee. No matter how hard you train or workout in the gym, if you received a well placed blow to the knee you could be out of fighting for several weeks if not months or even worse have career ending permanent damage to you knee. So, it is imperative that you learn how to take on the fighter that knows how to kick. Following are some tips for your to try out in your next sparring session that will likely take your opponent by surprise and more importantly save your career.

The 90° Rule

Again these are defenses specifically against lower body MMA style kicks. First, you do need to avoid connecting a shin on shin as this could easily result in the shattering of your bone and doing serious damage. Instead the first most basic defense you can try is instead of taking the blow to the side of your thigh as you will most often see in UFC competitions try turning your leg outwards to absorb the blow with the front of your thigh at a 90 degree angle with your attackers shin. You ought to find this much easier to absorb and less painful than the way you normally practice.

Blocking with Ankles

Secondly, you can try to catch your opponents strike with the front of your ankle - the center point of the curve from your lower leg to foot. This is an extremely hard bone. The trick is to raise your leg and push out and forward as you connect, breaking the power of the incoming kick, causing a great deal of pain to your opponent and throwing them off balance leaving them open to your follow through attack.

Blocking with Knees

The third and possibly easiest move to add to your arsenal is to make your attacker strike you on the front ball of the knee with his shin. To do this of course you must left and bend your leg to avoid breakage. But your opponent's shin connecting with your extremely hard knee will if not break his leg at least put them in such excruciating pain, that they will not want to strike you again. This not only will throw them off guard and injure them but throw off their strategy and confidence helping you to gain the advantage and claim victory. But please practice these moves with care to avoid injuring yourself as well.

Not Easy, But Effective

Now it is important that you understand what we are saying here is that these are way to take on the leg kick, they are not easy. These 3 tactics MUST be practiced before you even think about using them in the ring. If use incorrectly you will end up hurting yourself even worse then if you had just taken on the kick. So, in your next MMA training try these three tactics out and see which one you feel is most comfortable and start working to add that to your bag of tricks.