Landing A Devastating Knee With Alexsandro Periera
There has been a lot of study into what strike has the most potential to do a ton of damage. This makes a lot of sense as it’s in every fighter's best interest to know just what strike that they can do that does the most damage. You might think that it's a head kick, due to the amount of knockouts but this is actually not the case. A decent amount of studies into force production in martial arts have found that spearing knees are the strikes with the highest potential to do damage.
This is actually really good for a few reasons. The first is that knee strikes are overall a pretty easy strike to throw. The technique shouldn't be hard for a person with an average amount of kinesthetic awareness to get down after a few weeks. The second is that a knee, even one to the body, can end a fight in one shot. This is pretty obvious as solid knees to the head are dangerous and can end a fight. A solid knee to the body can be a fight ending liver shot, or it can break ribs. A body knee can also just cause so much pain that your opponent couldn’t even dream of making the ten count.
So knees rock if you can land them, but just how do you land them? In this video, Alexsandro Periera goes over how you can set up a powerful rear knee to take the wind out of your opponent. Alexsandro Pereira is one of the most talented kickboxers in the world today. He is currently both the Glory kickboxing middleweight and interim light heavyweight champion. He is also one of the only people to hold a victory over current UFC middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya. Pereira is actually the only person to hold two victories over Adesanya, with the second victory coming by way of knockout.
The video starts off with Periera explaining how the clinch works in K-1 style kickboxing. The clinch is heavily limited under this rule set, with only a few seconds of action at most being allowed before the referee breaks it up. This means that you need to be quick if you want to land your knee.
Set Up Devastating Knees With Alexsandro!
For the most part, knees are thrown from the clinch, or at least with some level of control on your opponent. In Muay Thai this usually means having the plum position. In kickboxing it's more common to get a single collar tie with your lead arm, to pull your opponent into the knee. You need to be quick when doing this however. In kickboxing, a standard defense to being up into a single collar tie is to bring your hips into your opponent, making it impossible for them to knee you hard.
This is why a lot of kickboxers, once they feel some type of clinch control on them, will constantly move their hips to their opponent. It becomes like a button or a sensor to close the distance between your hips.
Force Your Opponent To Cover Up
So instead of going for a single collar tie, you need to think of something else. Periera says that you should try to do a hard jab to your opponent's guard. You should do this a few times to get your opponent thinking about how powerful your jab is. Make sure that these are hard jabs to your opponent’s gloves, as if they parry your jabs, you will not get the reaction that you want. You want your opponent to cover up when they see you jab or move to jab. After a few power jabs to the guard your opponent will shell up after they see you move that way. You can now take advantage of this to land your knee.
You are going to fake your jab but actually throw your hand behind your opponent’s head. Don’t grab that collar tie just yet though. If you grab too early, your opponent will be able to bring their hips to yours. Instead of that, you're going to throw your knee and pull your hand back at the same time. This will pull your opponent into your knee, making it more powerful and it won’t give them enough time to bring their hips in to defend. You can do this with a normal knee or a jump knee but a jump knee is advised as it is faster. You can also choose between throwing your knee to the head or to the body. For the knee to the head you should use the jump knee to help cover the range, especially if you don;t have flexible hips.
If you liked this video and want to learn more from the Glory kickboxing double champ Alexsandro Pereira, then check out his complete video series “Total Striking Control by Alexsandro Pereira” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking!