Dutch Style Rear Low Kick With Ilias Ennahachi
The rear low kick is the cornerstone of all kickboxing styles. Whether it’s K-1, Muay Thai, Sanda or Dutch Style Kickboxing, learning how to throw a low kick with your rear leg is day one stuff. There’s a few reasons for this, mainly, it’s a good way to introduce a new student to the idea of kicking. It’s for sure the easiest kick to throw because the technique is overall pretty simple to learn and it requires no flexibility and it can be taught to someone who has a poor sense of place and proprioception.
The other reason is that despite the basicness of the technique, like all other fundamentals, it is highly effective. Landing just a few of these low kicks, especially on a person who is not used to getting kicked can drastically affect the performance of a fighter.
In this video Ilias Ennahaci shows how to throw a low kick in the style of a Dutch Kickboxer. Ilias Ennahaci is a Moroccan born kickboxer based in the homeland of Dutch Kickboxing, the Netherlands where he trains out of SB Gym. Currently Ennachaci competes in ONE championship under their super series banner. He currently competes in the flyweight kickboxing division and is in his first reign as it’s champion with one defense.
The Dutch kickboxing style of throwing low kicks is much different from the way that Muay Thai stylists throw it. In Muay Thai, low kicks are thrown with a wide arc and full torque of the hips. This allows the person throwing the kick to get the maximum amount of power and body weight into a kick. The problem is that this is slow and can be highly telegraphed, meaning your opponent has a chance to see it and block it.
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This is where the Muay Thai style low kick and the Dutch Style low kick differ. The Dutch style low kick sacrifices power for speed and quickness. The Dutch style low kick is much harder to see coming because it’s trajectory is much straighter, this also makes the strike quicker to land.
In the video you can see that Illias is throwing at a more upward trajectory, as compared to Muay Thai stylists who tend to throw at either a downward or completely horizontal trajectory. This helps make the strike quicker and harder to see.
To Dutch style low kick with your rear leg, step forward with your lead leg and turn your feet outwards. You can either land with a flat foot or on the ball of your feet. Landing on the ball of your feet will cause you to turn more which with this technique is probably not what you're going for.
After landing on your lead foot you are going to twist your hips to get some more power into the kick. Keep in mind that you won’t be twisting as much as you would be if you were throwing a Thai style low kick, just enough to get some more power.
You are then going to flick up your kick, kind of like a traditional Karate roundhouse kick due to the snapping nature of it. After landing the kick you are going to bring it back to your stance.
Like I mentioned earlier this kick is not the powerful combination ender that the Muay Thai kick is. This kick is more so a part of the combination than it’s finisher. This kick can be used to set up other strikes, start off a combination or just be in the middle of one. This way you can use this style of kick to break the rhythm of your combination to make it harder to defend against and then end off the combination with a more powerful Muay Thai style low kick.
If you like this technique from Ilias Ennahachi and want to learn more from him then check out his complete video series “Strikes From All Angles By Ilias Ennahachi” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking!