Today’s focus was entirely on footwork. We’ve learned how to circle in, around and out and now we are learning how to safely move by crossing our feet in order to quickly gain a positional advantage over our opponent. Note: by crossing our feet, I simply mean a normal walking step and NOT side to side as part of a karaoka
The drill was simple:
- jab at your partner and circle normally to the side
- When your partner turns towards you, you take your back foot and walk/stride forward towards the opposite side that you circled out, placing your former-back foot very close to their back foot. Then you’d complete your stride and turn to face your opponent. Some Notes:
- Your body should be very close to theirs so that they can’t effectively hit you with anything other than a swinging hook or going for a grapple + knee.
- This causes your leg to cross over but you gain a lot of distance and now you’re in position to hit your opponent while they need to turn almost 180 degrees to face you
- once you’re in position, kick the back of their thigh.
- They turn towards you in response. While they are turning, do the same motion of back leg forward in a stride -> cross over lead leg -> once at their back again, turn into position
- Kick the back of their thigh again
This could continue indefinetely if the opponent is an idiot and keeps circling directly towards you. The correct response from the opponent once realizing what is going on would be to step out as part of the turn. If you tried to step into them like you had been during the drill, then they are in position to hit you and go on the offensive.
Some additional notes:
- During the cross-over step, it is very easy to mix in a body hook.
- The simplest version is to body hook with the same side as whatever leg is stepping
- right-leg steps -> right body hook during step
- left-leg steps -> left body hook during step
- As you get more comfortable with it, you can throw in other things like clinching and uppercuts.
- The simplest version is to body hook with the same side as whatever leg is stepping
- This cross-over step will result in a stance change which will feel weird if you’re not used to your secondary stance
- Self Note: I didn’t even notice I was changing stances half-way through the class. I’ll take that as I’m getting more fluid in South Paw.
- The initial circle out NEEDS to force the opponent to move. For the first parts of the class, mine weren’t. The cause was that my steps were both too short and not aggressive enough
- I adapted by making my steps wider but I should try to get more comfortable moving into dangerous space
- Wolf talked about how these kind of steps are necessary for higher-level footwork
- we should strive to implement them in our sparring sessions