From: mary@Cayman.COM (Mary Malmros)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: Boxing and Kicks
Date: 9 Sep 92 03:13:36 GMT
	<1992Sep9.001222.22906@access.digex.com>
Organization: Cayman Systems Inc., Cambridge, MA
In-reply-to: cherry@access.digex.com's message of 9 Sep 92 00:12:22 GMT


In article <1992Sep9.001222.22906@access.digex.com> cherry@access.digex.com (Cherry Poptart) writes:

  >With all of this discussion of boxing vs. MA
  >I am unclear on a couple of things;
  >
  >1. In watching some kickboxer types recently,
  >and pro boxing on TV, it seems like there is 
  >not much need for these guys to block "kicks
  >to the head" because they stay covered up most
  >of the time.  In fact, while they seem open to
  >kicks to the lower legs and maybe up to mid
  >thigh, their upper bodies seem to be very well 
  >covered by the closed stance that they hold
  >(looks real different from the MA stances that
  >I see in the movies ;-)
  >
  >2. If you did kick up high at a boxer, what
  >would happen if he or she decided to box your 
  >foot?  They seem to put a lot o power into some
  >of their shots, and the foot is actually pretty 
  >slow (to be technical, on a straight kick it 
  >pretty much has to come to a halt to reverse 
  >direction, maybe not so for a roundhouse though).
  >Since I know someone who is hobbling around right
  >now with a severe (blackened) bruse on one foot
  >(someone blocked their kick with an elbow, and I
  >guess in this case the foot lost) I would have to 
  >think that sticking your foot in a boxers face 
  >would be like saying "here, hit this". 

Caveat: it's been a while since I saw any pro American-style
kickboxing, and I know very little about the modern state 
of the art.  My experience is in taekwondo, which is somewhat
different...and in my experience, kicks to the head are not
something that you can ignore or shrug off.  Covering up -- 
having your guard up so that your arms are guarding your 
head -- will help a little, but not enough.  Your arms won't
stop the kick in this position -- they're just guarding, not
blocking -- and you'll still get a very solid shot in a 
very vulnerable target.  If it's something _relatively_ weak
like a hook kick or a roundhouse kick, at the very least, your
head will still get snapped back.  One of the more powerful
kicks, like a wheel kick, will simply take you right off your
feet.  This thread gets brought up every so often, when someone
looks at a high kick and says, "Gee, I bet I could just grab
that!"  Heh.  There is many a dental surgeon whose children
have been put through college because of just such unwise 
assumptions.  

Re: the straight kicks having to come to a halt to reverse
direction: by that I assume you are referring to things 
like a side thrust kick, where the leg must be chambered
prior to kicking...not exactly reversing direction, but I
don't know what else you could mean.  The foot doesn't have
to come to a halt, or slow down significantly; if it does
slow down much, the kick's not being done right.  The 
chambering motion is necessary to get the proper power, 
but it should be executed very quickly, and the line of
movement of the _foot_ (not necessarily everything else)
should be continuous, from the floor to the target.

As for your friend who's got the bruised foot, I'd venture
that it wasn't got while throwing a head kick.  I think most
hard-contact stylists are pretty strongly conditioned to 
keep the elbows down, where they can protect the ribcage.  
For a head kick to hit an elbow, the elbow would have to
be up so high that the entire ribcage would be exposed...
and if that were the case, you probably would not have
picked the head for a target in the first place.  

  >3. If you took american boxing and added kicks
  >to it, wouldnt it just, eventually, evolve into
  >something like Thai kickboxing?   Or not?

Probably not, if what you mean is muay thai.  American audiences
are sick enough to watch "Battle of the Network Stars", but
I don't think they're really up for muay thai.

There's nothing special about kicking styles.  They're just 
styles in which people practice kicks with the same intensity
and dedication as people in other styles practice joint locks, 
or throws, or whatever.  If you've been practicing the same
joint lock every day for the past several years, do you think
it's something that can be just shrugged off?  Probably not...
if you practice anything that much, you'll get to be good at
it.  And kicks are no different.  So please, please, please,
don't be misled by people who tell you you can just shrug
off those high kicks.  Maybe, in a particular case, you'll
be able to.  You might go up against a big-talking 16-year-old
yellow belt who can kick fairly high, OR fairly hard, but not
both at once, and hasn't begun to really work on "fast" yet.
Likewise, I might be able to slip an inexpertly applied joint
lock, even though I have very little training inescapes.  
But it seems really silly to say that you've got an effective
strategy for dealing with a particular technique, when your
basic premise is that the technique was applied in a weak&worthless
fashion.  Hey, I can do that...I've got a great strategy for
dealing with weak&worthless attacks: punch the guy's lights 
out.  Someone attacks me with a weak&worthless spinning hook kick?
Punch the guy's lights out.  Someone attempts to apply a 
weak&worthless choke on me?  Punch the guy's lights out.  
Someone takes a weak&worthless stab at me with a poin-ted
stick?  Punch the guy's lights out.  You see?  It works every
time...IF I can assume, of course, that I have a weak&worthless
attacker.  
--
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