Set Up The Low Kick With Carlos Condit

A lesson that’s taught to pretty much every person on their first day in a striking class is to set up your roundhouse kicks with punches. This is because throwing a roundhouse kick “naked” without any punches makes the kick easy to see. Punches help hide your intentions and get your opponent focused on your hands, meaning they are less likely to see your kick. Punches also occupy the vision of your opponent. This makes it harder to literally see a kick coming. 

Punches also get your opponent heavy on their feet so that they can maintain their base. The thing is that we don’t often see this the other way around. Kicks are 90 percent of the time the exclamation point on a combination. If you see a roundhouse kick of any kind being thrown, it usually means the combination is over. That’s what makes it more surprising when the kick is not the end of a combination and a punch follows after it. 

In this video, Carlos Condit goes over how to throw a lead hook after landing a rear leg low kick. Carlos Condit is an MMA legend, having competed in Shootobox, Pancrase, the WEC and the UFC. He is the first WEC welterweight champion and was a former interim UFC Welterweight champion. 

This combination works off one that Carlos shows earlier in his full video series. The original combination starts with a step out jab. This is where you throw a jab and simultaneously step out to the side with your rear leg. This will create a strong angle where your opponent can’t see or defend against you. From there you can fire off a strong low kick that hits the back of your opponent’s leg. 

Off of this low kick as you're bringing your leg back, you are going to throw a lead hook. This is likely to be really effective for two reasons. One because your opponent probably thinks that because you just kicked, your combination is now over. The second is that because of the angle that you’re now at, the hook is primed to land.

Make sure to rip that hook at the same time that you’re bringing your leg back so that you can land it. Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that you can’t have a solid base and be off balance when you land, just that you should take advantage of the natural momentum that bringing your leg back after a kick gives you.

Your opponent will be heavy on their legs for a brief moment due to the leg kick that you just threw. This means that them moving out of the way of this hook is almost impossible. Their only option to defend is to get their hands up. Keep this in mind as you might have to be tricky with your hooks angle if you want to land it. 

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