Martial Arts Attacks - Defending Your Long Range

By Keith Pascal

Distance Attacks
Sometimes, real fights start with your attacker at a distance. Not all fights start with your enemy right on top of you. Fortunately, some of the time, you get a little advanced warning.

Your aggressor may try to get past your long range defenses, for an in-fight attack.
Or maybe he (or she) is a long-range fighter -- someone who will start with distance kicks. Your attacker’s kick may come flying through the air, follow a giant step toward you, or just reach with a long leg.

How to Defend Against a Long-Range Kick
Whichever long-range kick you have to counter, you still probably have a situation where your aggressor’s kick is reaching you, but you can’t get in to reach your attacker.

So, what do you do?
The answer is you don’t go after your attacker ... yet.
Instead of reaching for your attacker, think in terms of protecting your own body space. Stop the limb that is approaching.

Ala Bruce Lee, you want to reach with your weapon -- maybe a shin kick -- to the closest part of your opponent. In this case, you kick your attacker’s shin.

As the kick comes in, you kick the kick.

By the way, kicking the kick with a low kick is technically known as a stop kick. And that’s what it needs to do -- it has to be able to stop your attacker’s kick.

Completely.
This means that your low shin kick should be completely locked. Straight at the knee. You need to offer a solid structure for your opponent to be stopped.

If your leg is bent, you could get toppled by the force of your attacker’s kick. His or her forward energy will knock you over, if you aren’t set in place.

You need to time it, so your kick locks out straight at the knee, just a hair before contact.
Be Prepared for Attacks at Any RangeOf course, a long-range kick, followed by your stop kick is not the only way a long-range attack could progress. Your enemy could break through your defense, and come in close, for “hand-to-hand combat.”

Your attacker could even be close enough for a solid elbow strike. At this point, a stop kick probably won’t work the way you’d need it to.

Would you know how to counter an elbow strike?

Would you like to?
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Keith Pascal has been a martial-arts writer for eight years and a martial arts teacher for 25 years.