Kickboxing

Kickboxing is a fighting martial art, revolving around a fight between two opponents using punching, kicking and sweeping techniques.

There are several theories about the origins of Kickboxing, which has grown in popularity in the UK over recent years.

Punches are similar to the ones used by boxers (jab, cross, hook, uppercut) plus a couple of extra ones (back-fist and knife-hand). Kicks are similar to those in other martial arts: front, side, round, hook, internal and external crescent, axe. Sweeping techniques are comparable to Judo techniques such as: de ashi barai, o soto gari, ko soto gake and so on. Elbow, knee and head strikes are not included in the Kickboxing curricula. Our Kickboxing training pays a lot of attention to guards and positions, in order to incur minimal time and energy wasting during sparring.

Several other martial arts rely on the assumption that each attack will knock out the opponent (a KO); in those martial arts poor attention is paid to actually defending against a counter attack during/after each technique. By contrast, during our training we know that a counter attack from our opponent might occur at any time and we learn how to be ready for that.

One of the advantages of kickboxing training, compared to other non contact martial arts is the feeling of reality that can be perceived since the first lessons. Every time you strike or block an attack you know whether the technique would in fact have effect in a real situation. Also, the continuous pair training and sparring helps the individual to cope with stress caused by the awkward situation of fighting against somebody: this can be extremely useful when facing a real self defence situation. The level of contact is both determined by the kind of lesson that the Master is running (see also the competitions page ) and by mutual agreement between the people training with each other.

Done well, a Kickboxing match appears smooth and pleasant to watch, with combinations of punches and kicks alternated in a very harmonious way.