[Music] what's up everybody welcome my name is gabriel varga i'm a six-time pro kickboxing world champion you can check out some of my belts behind me here now if you've been to my channel before you know that i like sharing unique content with you guys it's not something that you can find on every other kickboxing channel and i really enjoy sharing information with you that you can't find anywhere else but i have had so many requests from people who want to learn how to kickbox who want to learn the fundamentals of kickboxing but because gyms are close they're going what do i do how do i learn so for everybody out there today who's wanting to learn kickboxing or anybody who wants to brush up on their technique we are going back to basics the fundamentals of kickboxing and it doesn't even have to just be for kickboxing the punches will work well for boxing fundamentals the striking in general is just good for mma and the striking minus the elbows is good for muay thai so we've got all the fundamentals really covered here but i am a specialist in kickboxing so it is going to be kickboxing style now i don't want this to be a really long drawn out episode so we're going to try and crunch all this basic information into a very short period of time so it's concise filled with knowledge and you don't have to spend one hour here with me learning all the basics you will have to put in the time though in repetition so in this episode we're going to go through punch technique kick technique knee technique we're going to look at our stance and our guard we're going to finish it up with our hand defense our leg defense and then finally talk about shadow boxing where you bring it all together so let's start off guys and get right into the stance there are a number of different ways and one of the things i really don't like doing is show you guys one way there's only one way to do this no there's lots of ways to do everything i'm going to show you a number of different stances and you can choose from there which one works best for you for myself i like shoulder width i like having my toes pointing this direction and i really really like generally because i'm bouncing a lot of time i like keeping my back heel my back heel disconnected from the ground i find that right there gives me a lot of power to push forward and then when i push backwards i can catch myself on that ball of the foot without having my weight tip over my heels so pretty much all the time for me unless i'm taking a break and i'm like this i'm gonna have my back heel disconnected from the ground and then my toes pointing this way now there's no exact rule that you have to do things my way you can narrow your stance up if you want and have your knees more or less in line you could bend from there and have that stance the main thing that you need to figure out with your stance is where you feel the most comfortable if you are this type of fighter where you're going to be bouncing sort of muay thai stylist you can get away with flat feet but if you want to be moving around a little more mobile it is better to be up on the balls of your feet and when i bounce like that i just personally find that a narrow stance doesn't make me feel as comfortable a little wider feels better both knees bend very slightly and then from there i need to look at what my upper body is doing i don't want to have my back straight like this i like to curl everything just a little bit compact through the stomach pull the shoulders forward just a tiny bit because now they become protective points of your body they can protect your jaw and then from there we move to the guard because our stance is locked in we're feeling balanced our hands need to be in a certain point where we felt comfortable now again i'm not going to tell you one way to do it because there's so many you can have your hands out here far from your head you can have your hands down here just below your eye level i prefer taking both my hands and putting them just above my eyebrows leaving a little space between my arms that i can peek through right from here i'm able to do the least amount of work to block shots we're going to get to that after but this is my preferred spot if you want you can go out here does not really matter as long as you feel comfortable with your defense and your ability to shoot hands out and bring them back and we always want to be aware of protecting the body that's what the elbows are going to be doing the elbows are going to be there to block the straight shots to block down to the body so we want to make sure the elbows don't flare excessively out once we've locked in our stance our chosen stance and our chosen hand position we're then ready to move on to the striking aspect so let's start quickly with the straight punches they're the most basic they're the easiest we come right from our head we go right out to our target which is most likely directly in front of us as we throw out we make sure our palm is facing downwards my hip leads the shot my arm and shoulders follow when i reach the extension of my punch i want to make sure my shoulder protects my jaw i could just do this i could just throw there but then i leave myself open to overhand so i like to teach when i throw my straight punches keeping my shoulders tucked upon extension as i extend out i want to keep my elbow tucked because flaring up does two things it leaves my ribcage open for kicks or potentially punches but it also is an indication of what's coming the elbows stay tucked i twist through my feet and my hips my shoulders follow and then i twist out palm faces down shoulder protects the cheek i pull right back as people start throwing multiple straight punches very often they get a little bit too excited and they forget about pulling the other hand back fast enough so if i throw two punches i never want to have two hands out at once i want to always have one hand out one hand in and i alternate to the exact same target we're not hitting multiple targets we're not moving our hands around it's every time to the exact same target straight out now from there we can move on to hooks when i throw my hook out i have three options my thumb faces up my thumb faces down or my thumb faces towards me this is personal preference europeans teach like this when i was in thailand they taught me like this most of the americans seem to throw like this this is my preferred method this feels best on my hand and my wrist when i make impact but i've i have thrown like this and there's nothing wrong with it it just aggravates me a bit more so i prefer not to do that when i throw my hooks i'm looking for a couple things first off my arm is horizontal i want my elbow lined up with my fist it doesn't matter if i'm hitting head level or body level my elbow is behind the fist so that when i hit i have all the impact coming into my elbow as opposed to when i hit and my wrist folds because there's nothing back there supporting it so elbow is high we're also looking for the body just like on the straight punches to torque and i twist my hips before the strike lands lots of rotation through the lower body if i was to put my hands on my hips and just practice the motion without any arms going it would just look something like that and i'm actually just driving through my feet and my hips and then i can add in the hands throwing whichever one's not is still protecting just like on the straight punches elbow tucked in really tight i don't want to lift and then rotate i want to rotate rotate rotate and start lifting and then snap the arm at the end to get that extra power and then from here we move into the uppercut so the big mistake people usually make on uppercuts if they want to hit a target here is they start with their hand by their cheek they pull their hand down and then they go to hit we don't want to do that for uppercuts when we're learning we want to learn with our legs we're in our stance we bend our knees we pull our striking shoulder backwards and then from there we unwind our body and we come up to the target i drop my twist i unwind if i'm going to throw my lead arm i drop i twist i unwind again elbow directly below the fist we don't want to be coming out on a weird angle when we hit up we're trying to lift somebody's jaw we want the support of the rest of the arm behind the fist so just being very diligent about not pulling your arms down the hip level and letting the knees do the work and then once i strike with my uppercut always pulling my hand directly back to my head for defensive purposes that's what we're looking for in the uppercuts to the jaw level like i said guys we're going to be breezing through this really fast today so now we're moving on to kicks on our front kicks we are generally trying to lift our leg up have our heel directly below the knee my standing leg has done a pivot that means that the foot twists if i try to twist and my foot is flat on the ground it's going to stick so as i lift my knee up i raise up to the ball of my foot and then i land my heel back down i want to make sure that i'm very very light on the heel area through this because heel connected to the ground will just make you stick and it'll make the pivot very difficult if you do not pivot i'm going to just control this here so i can go very slow hold this if i don't pivot look at the distance i get i extend out and that's as far as my leg goes with a pivot i now turn my toes off to this side so 90 degrees i get to there and then if i add a lean back i can stretch even further so instead of being very rigid with my body keeping my toes up straight towards my target and keeping my head upright where my kick looks like that i do all the other motions that i just indicated pivot lean back and i can stretch right through the target now we're not sliding upwards we're bringing your knee up we're extending out we're pulling back now the foot position it's like i'm trying to point my toes like a ballerina or my foot sorry i'm pointing my foot like a ballerina but then i pull my toes back and i strike with the ball of the foot if i want to kick high i bring my knee extra high if i want to kick low i let my knee go lower the line from the hip to the knee indicates what direction i'm going to kick now we're only going to focus on two kicks today because we're just covering basics we did the front kick we're now going to talk about the round house kick where my front kick is coming directly into somebody's stomach that's what we're aiming for right for the abs there the round kick is coming around to the ribcage the head or to the thigh the pivot on a round kick these toes turning that is essential because i need my shoulders to turn so when i throw my round kick i've turned completely off to the side if i do not pivot as far as i can go my kick is going to lack power without turning through that foot so i disconnect my heel i turn and my whole body follows it's essentially if i was just trying to learn this without having any pivot i could just lift my leg up and just practice this motion my leg is horizontal heel to knee and i just extend re-chamber extend re-chamber from there when i'm down i turn to that position and then i have two options either i'm doing a karate sort of style kick or a kick and i pull or i just let my leg go right through and i just get that full power muay thai kick on the roundhouse kick i am looking for a pointed toe i'm not striking with my toes though i'm either going to strike with the upper foot maybe if i was going up to head level even better striking with the lower shin the hands are also very important in this when i kick if i'm kicking with my right leg my right arm swings down but my left hand has to stay right up to protect my head if i want to kick with my left leg i can do a little jump switch my stance and then i'm kicking with my left leg so my left arm swings down it's always good to recap the basics either you're learning and you're going through them or just recapping what your hands are doing even advanced people you sometimes see them pre-load their hands up they start going like oh and swinging all i need to do is keep the one hand to my head and the other one drops that's my motion anything more than that is an indication of what i'm getting ready to throw which means i'm telegraphing all right from here i want to move on to our knee strikes when we throw our knee we're looking for very similar to a front kick we're coming straight up the middle but instead of having my heel away from my bum i'm pulling my heel tight to my bum and instead of keeping uh instead of pivoting like we were before on our standing leg we are now going to stretch the height of the foot as much as possible it's like i'm trying to come up to this position and poke myself up but instead of going up i'm poking my knee through the target we're not grabbing the head and dragging down and trying to bring this knee as high as possible for most knees we're going to the belly so we're drawing up and poking out disconnecting my bottom heel from the ground and going through my opponent's stomach now if you want to practice the basic hand position you can imagine grabbing pulling both hands to the opposite hip and then dropping and we're never going to be grabbing anybody anyway like this because if we're grabbing to the head we'd probably just knead it ahead and then once we grab we can initiate clench but i'm just talking right now about what the hands actually do pulling to the hip is a good beginner stage then we start pulling the hands higher so that when i knee towards towards you guys i actually protect my face from any potential straight punches if i go to throw knee and somebody throws a punch at me i've protected myself with my hands it's opposite elbow to opposite knee just pulling that arm across all right continuing to speed through this we are now talking about our hand defense if you're at home and you want to work the basics the basic hand defense i'm just going to give you a couple is if a straight punt straight punch comes let's say a left hand you throw a left hand at me i take my right hand and i knock it to the side a little bit of shoulder motion i don't just use my arms i can actually engage my shoulders and i just pat it across so if the punch comes and somebody knocks it to the side the punch is just redirected and it'll just mess i don't want to do a windshield wiper motion where i go down i want to come across and i can work either arm so i can just stand here and imagine left hand left hand right hand right left right left right that's the first form of defense for the straight punches the second form we're not going to worry about slipping today the second one of actually blocking is taking my hands and doing what i call a turtle shell i have my gloves to my forehead and i just turtle shell up very important to have a proper stance we talked about this before not having my back straight if my back is straight and i have my hands up in my turtle shell the person hits me and i get knocked backwards but if my back is bent and i'm shelled up a little bit i have that round bit to my back my stomach is strong when i get hit i just get knocked back a little bit like that so the proper stance is important i can work my parries these are called parries or i can work my turtle shell i still see in front i'm not closing it completely still stays a little bit open but not enough for the boxing glove to make it through so i can block here and block there i can block down the middle if i want to block a hook i like to reach behind my ear my hand never disconnects from my head i slide it up and i grab the back of my head protecting that entire side if i want to block the other side i come up and if i want to block the body the body hooks i just drop elbow to hip by bending my knees elbow the hip so now i have straight punches turtle shell on the straight punches blocking head hooks to the side bringing those elbows up or blocking the body shots and we can put all that together and i just start working oh i'm blocking i'm working away oh i got overwhelmed turtle shell back down to the body and you just start clipping that all together to make some nice handy vents now for the legs we're going to keep it extra basic today we're only gonna have two blocks that we're gonna work we're gonna work only round kick defense round kick defense number one somebody goes to kick me down in the thigh my hands are up they do not move they never drop in height i lift my leg up not directly in front because if i get kicked right now it's my calf that takes the impact that hurts if i go too far out to the side the kick will come and catch my standing leg i go on a 45 degree angle i pull my toes up to flex up my muscles around my shin to help support it i go fairly level with my leg sort of hip to knee my hands stay up and i check the low keck i can check there if it comes to the other side i can either come across or i can utilize my other leg very often it's easier because you're usually a little bit heavier on the back leg it's easier to just pick up the front leg to get the blocking happening and then if i see them coming here and i know i can't block it then i can transition my weight for the body round kicks we have the option of coming elbow to knee although that's not my favorite my favorite way of dealing with the body round kicks is to do what i call a cross block the round kick is coming to this arm i take my opposite arm i reach across and i have about 70 80 percent of the impact absorbed through the glove and the wrist area of that arm i bend my knees i twist my hips and i put some weight into that kick so it doesn't knock me over this room here leads me into positions where i can counter back i can block and i can hit them back it comes to the other side i bend both knees i drop my weight this hand stays up to protect me the entire time and the other arm boom comes across comes across this is fast and it should be about that pace there block block it comes down to the leg the kick comes down to the leg check check block these are the ones that i personally like to do we could spend a whole hour on leg defense we're crushing it into a short little period of time here but it's enough that you guys can learn the basics so guys we have our punches down we have our kicks down we have our knees down we have our stance and our guard we have a little bit of defense for the hands and throat for the legs now what we have to do is put it all together and utilize shadow boxing shadow boxing is an opportunity for you guys to practice everything you know in a nice controlled environment where you need to imagine an opponent in front of you if you just go here and you're just sort of and that's all you're doing it's always offense it's not very good shadow boxing shadow boxing should be a simulation in your mind of a fight so i'm moving around and i try to put a combination together maybe a one two three and then i imagine oh they're coming towards me i move back a little bit then i move in again one two and then maybe they run towards me i stop them with the front kick and then they throw a kick at me i block it and i counter back and i counter with that and it's just a nice fluid pace where you can practice all your techniques you can work the blocking you can do everything and get ready for bag work pad work sparring whatever else might come after the shadow boxing and after the technical aspect is taken care of for the shadow boxing you should be doing at least three three minute rounds you start off slow you focus on your technique you focus on the mindset of giving and taking shots and then bit by bit you pick up the pace guys there's so much to teach like i said i just crammed a whole bunch of information into a very short period of time hopefully you guys managed to take something out of it to work on learning technique or to sharpen up and just correct little mistakes you might have made we all form bad habits sometimes just slowing things down and going back to basics will really be the key to improving guys i hope you enjoyed this episode if you want to see something not back to basics but maybe an intermediate video a follow-up to this one let me know in the comments below if you have any questions throw it down there i'll get back to you give the video a like if you enjoyed it get subscribed if you haven't already train hard guys and i'll see you back here soon for another video