Krav Maga - Low Round Kick Defense Using the Shin (Calf Kick Defense Variation)

The Low Round Kick Defense (Using The Shin) is traditionally taught as a defense when your attacker is targeting your thigh or knee with their round kick. What do you do when they target your calf?

This video explains why both beginner and advance fighters often will target your calf when they throw low round kicks. Then it shows you how to modify your defense to address this problem.

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Important Note: These videos are specific to the techniques and curriculum taught to the students at our facility. Students from other Krav Maga schools and organizations are more than welcome to watch and use these videos and we hope they find them useful! However, variations may be taught that are different from the techniques taught at other Krav Maga locations. This doesn't mean one variation is wrong or the other is right. They are just variations...plain and simple. The most important question for any technique or defense should be this: Does it work for the individual who is performing it? As long as it does, then the technique or variation has merit, regardless of where it comes from! That's the number one principle that we emphasize at our school.

Transcript:

"Hey everyone. This is Glenda, I'm Randall, KravMagaTraining.com. In this video we're going to go over how to defend the low round kick using your shin as a blocking tool. But specifically, I want to address how to defend when someone is trying to kick you in the calf, not the thigh or the knee.

Now, the reason why I'm addressing this is because this question actually comes up a lot with my students. More than you would realize. And the reason why it comes up is because of a couple of different reasons. So before I get into how to modify your defense to address that, I want to explain why this happens.

First of all, when you're dealing with a more experienced fighter they're not just going to be kicking you in the thigh or the legs. They might be targeting your calf for a couple of different reasons. Glenda, if you could get into a fighting stance. All right. So she's used to defending the kick to the thigh so as a more experienced fighter will start kicking her in the calf to cause damage there. I might be doing that to change the levels up a little bit.

Another reason a more experienced fighter might be using this is they might be using this as a sweeping tool. Sorry Glenda, I had to do it! All right.

Another trick that a lot of more experienced fighters will do is Glenda is more in tune with defending the kick to the thigh. So she knows to bring her knee up and defend my kick up here. So my potential counter to that is when she starts raising her knee up because to think I'm kicking her in the thigh, my counter would be, go ahead and defend Glenda, would be to chop out the other leg underneath as well.

So these are just a few of many examples of why a more experienced fighter might be targeting your calf instead of your thigh for the round kick.

However, we are going to take this on the other end of the spectrum. And here's the funny part is you actually have to deal with this shit more with beginners. And the funny thing is it's not because they are so slick and realize this is a target as well. It's, quite frankly, it's because their accuracy sucks. It's funny. I get kicked more in the shins when I spar with beginners than anybody else. And the reason why is their sense of distance, the timing and the height is not very good. They mean to kick in the thigh but they are so focused in sparring and they are kind of new to this stuff, their accuracy is just not very good. So ironically, that comes up a lot in sparring just because beginner's accuracy is not very good.

Okay. Anyways. Now that I've explained the reasons why this particular kick might happen, let me explain the simple defense for it. It's very easy..."

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