Throwing Knees

Knees are one of the fundamental tools of any Nak Muay. Very early on in my career, I seemed to take a liking to the clinch and kneeing from the clinch. However, after every fight, I always review the footage of my performance, and I am always bothered by the technique of my knees. I'd never known what was wrong until recently. As I have mentioned before, my knees were among the techniques criticized heavily by the trainers upon arriving here. Since then, I've spent a lot of time watching others and shadowboxing in the mirror to try to mimic the motions I was seeing.

For starters, the image at the top of this post is a perfect example of proper knee technique. You can see that the base leg is straight and pointed forward. The attacker has stepped up onto the ball of the foot to enable the hips to drive forward, while the spine remains straight and the upper body moves backward slightly. The hips do not open, but they do twist to thrust the knee forward. This gives a slight angle to the leg which enables the foot to move off to the side slightly and hook the hip to block the opponent's hips with the shin if necessary.

Now this is a sketch, so it is reasonable to be skeptical of the mechanics of this motion. Here are a few more images of knees being thrown in action to demonstrate the technique:

Lets contrast this with my own knee technique from about 1 year ago:

Here you can see that my body is leaning forward even as I am delivering the knee strike. This can be easily noticed by looking at the curvature of my lower back leading down to my base leg. Also my base leg is bent, which effectively makes it a spring to cushion some of the blow from the knee by not putting a solid foundation behind it. My base foot is flat, which only tends to move my body weight backwards, fighting the motion of the knee. On top of it all, my hips are clearly below my shoulders and I am using my hip flexor muscle to deliver the knee instead of my quads and my glutes (the two largest muscles on the human body).

Contrasting these images, it is quite clear what I need to do to improve my technique. As with most things, it is easier said than done. I've including a clip of me doing skip knees on the bag. While skip knees vary slightly from the technique of a knee thrown from the full clinch plum, the fundamentals are the same. Relaxing the abdomen, keeping the lower back straight, and using the glutes and hips to thrust forward.

Here is a video I took of myself a little while back doing skip knees on the bag:


Enjoy the tips. Good technique is effective technique. Just wash, rinse, and repeat.