Match critique

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is in the right area but I'm just wondering if I post up my video from my match last month would I be able to get some constructive criticism about what I could have done better or need to work on for next time besides my fitness.

The match was 3 x 2 minute rounds (although the video goes for 15 mins due to protests and round breaks etc) and only body kicks were allowed (no head kicks for yellow belts), they had an insufficient amount of officials at the event so we only had 2 corner judges instead of 4 which made scoring tricky.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXAv-Z9V2Rw"]TKD NSW state titles - YouTube[/ame]

Apologies for some parts where the camera veers off, one of our then senior red belts was recording and he had his young child with him who kept trying to move away. Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated

Edit: I forgot to mention I'm in the red hogu lol
Chris.

 

I had a look. lots to add. I'll get back to you :0

edit: what club are you from btw?

 

I'm from Western Sydney Taekwondo

 

Maybe go for power shots and less on the quantity. Load up and crack him. Or is it light contact only allowed? Red is better but pretty evenly matched. Blue's hands are flailing all over the place. Your hand position needs work in terms of points of defense, too opened. Good fight. Best way to get better is to compete.

 

Use more powerful hand strike that will move the person. I mean it's not like a face punch that will move a person's head even if not striking hard. Instead of punching just to make them block move them. I saw you do a kick punch combo, which is good. If you power through the person with your punch they'll move and you can do another kick.

Also use you back hand on these punches. You're not going for speed but power. One thing you could try is to slide your back foot up (so you back hand is now front) while punching to increase power and possible fake the person out.

Now don't stop doing quicker punches all together, but more powerful punches will really throw people off in TKD, where no one ever sees hand strikes.

 

- less punching: Wasting energy. If you're going to punch than use it to create space or knock him off balance.

- Manage distance: You're not employing any strategy. You're just responding to him in a flury.

- Add the skill of quickly closing the distance and clinching. I think those are the most basic things that is needed for your foundation

 

I don't know about your rules, but when I've done competitions in that past, in various arts, when no head shots are allowed, such as this, you're still expected to guard the head and are penalized if you leave your head open.

but it could be different in your TKD rules - my one and only TKD competition was a farce anyway...

 

Thanks for the replies guys,

Full contact is allowed, but for some reason I hold back from doing it though and I'm still trying to figure out why, I'm putting it down to either I'm trying to hold off from going too hard to make sure I pace myself across the rounds, or because I'm used to only going very light contact in previous arts that I've done.

I usually only throw punches when I'm in too close that I'm not able to kick, and yeah my strategy is either none existent or doesn't last very long in my matches, I definitely need to work on that so I can plan things out better.

As I said above I’m not a big user of the punch and when I do I don’t throw all my weight behind it, though I guess the one advantage I have with punching is I have quite a decent arm reach.

We don't get penalised if we don't protect our head even if it's only body shots, I've taken a few kicks to the noggin cause I had (and still have from time to time) a bad habit of bending over to try and protect myself from body shots, I've nearly been KO'd a few times in class due to this too but I'm slowly getting better at not doing that anymore.

 

Hmm, I kinda disagree. To OP, I'll give you an account of what I have found works most successfully for me:

Punching is never wasting energy if you do it properly. That means doing it hard with good form and doing the full technique (i.e. not just tapping his hogu with a half bend in the elbow). Even if you don't score, you're showing your opponent that you are not ONLY limited to body kicks and he will tend to refrain from getting as close if he knows you are consistently, effectively punching (also note that if your opponent knows that you are going to punch if he comes to close, he could use that against you).

Managing distance is a very good point. That means two things: one, if he is kicking you, don't walk/run/skip/kick towards him unless you're sure you can get in an opening. Move around, be light on your feet. You want to be out of his range when he is attacking, especially in body kicks only, it's pretty difficult to kick someone in a scoring area while they are kicking you. Two, if you are not attacking, you don't need to be in an attacking stance, you need to be at your most mobile (while being out of range). This means skip around the opponent and when you are ready, go into attacking stance from there.

On basic skills, as you are still a yellow belt, I would not expect your kicks to be perfect, lol. But still, the most beneficial thing for you would be to get completely comfortable with the kicking movements in a side kick and turning(round) kick. Mastering the two basic ones will let you double, treble, quadruple your kicks. You should be doing lots of kicks on the one leg when you lift it, rather than one at a time. This is much more efficient and helps a lot more with scoring. Getting a better turning kick and side kick leads in to make pretty much all of your other kicks better. With the side kick also, make sure you are kicking with the foot sword, it's a good habit to get into.

Best advice I can give you on improving your kicks is to just stretch lots, daily is definitely recommended, practice your kicks while leaning on a wall, do slow kicks and condition the muscles in your legs.

 

My punching needs some work, I have a habit of a half hearted punch to the hogu as opposed to really driving the punch in.. I also need to work on my kicking timing due to being left footed I tend to have leg/knee clashes with the right footers if we both kick at the same time, I need to be able to see it and switch feet accordingly.

My turning and spinning kicks need a fair bit of work though, I usually only throw a back kick at the end of a roundhouse kick, I've got a BOB at home so I need to spend more time in the background getting my kicking better as well as my footwork and evasion etc.

Thanks for the tip about improving my stretching and conditioning of my legs, I need to stop being so lazy in that area.

 

okay I'll chime in.

punching: not useful for competitions in terms of scoring tbh. you can break him coming in with that strong front hand, or more successfully with a cross of the back hand BUT that's only useful if you actually follow it up with a scoring kick. the bread and butter to this is as he rushes in, Jamthe attack with a punch and kick off the rear leg, either turning kick to the body or a crescent to the face.

next.

your body type. your way Way taller then him. what's your weight and how tall are you? when your much taller its about playing further away and picking him off with your front foot, especially with the daedo system, which you will use if you keep fighting. you did this well in the beginning of the 2nd round I think.

I don't want to overload you with too much infor as you just started, and you have your own coach
but if your going to get serious on fighting you can focus on improving the following things. if your interested I can give a run down of some drills to do this? but Its a little beyond the scope ofy smart phone.

1. stance, even balanced, maybe a bit extra weight on front foot, movement doesn't change yourn stance so your always ready to kick
2. footwork/distance. will stop you getting tired as was when you maintain the distance at your preferred range (long)
3. technical. kicks need improvement....but your only a yellow belt. this comes wIthaca training
4. strategy. will be easy to implement when uoubhave the above foundations
5. fitness. lowest priority to all of these. will come with more sport training and you can improve later.

good?

 

You don't look all to comfortable in the ring yet. How to cure that? Time.
You're still relatively new to TKD, so just keep training and eventually you'll get your senses used to fighting.

One thing that I saw that may need work on (again you're still new, so it's normal) is your kicking. They were slow, predictable, lacked power, lacked commitment, and on some occasions you didn't retract the leg quick enough leaving you open.

So if you have the ability practice kicks on a heavy bag as much as possible. If you can't buy one, then join a gym since they'll most likely have one at hand, and maybe your instructor will allow you to come in on non-training days to practice.
Focus on the things that I've mentioned above. Make sure to work both legs equally, so that they perform similarly. Start with roundhouses and side kicks, both with the back leg, as you get better at these throw in more kicks. Practice induvidual techniques (say 10 roundhouses with both legs) and then work into a "freestyle" mode, where you do w/e technique comes to mind. For the latter, you can use to improve your sparring stamina by going at it for varying amounts of time and/or intensities. Grab a stopwatch and start with 3 rounds of 1 minute with 30 seconds break, while constantly performing techniques, and increase time as needed.

I can't help you with strategy since I don't spar with WTF rules. But also, I don't believe in strategies, I've always gone farther by instinct. Strategies have a nasty habit of working really well on some people, and not working at all on others.

Hope it helps, and good luck in the future.

 

Liero - I'm 6'3 and at that tournament I weighed in at 85.9kg, a lot of guys I've come up against usually tend to rush me to close the distance and the temptation is there to throw a crescent or front snap kick to the face as they come in but with yellow belts we are only allowed body kicks (some guy died a few years back so they changed the rules for yellow belts), I also need to get used to using my front foot more as well.

I graded to blue belt the week after that tournament so it'll be different next time, one of the state competitions in July will be using Daedo for blue/red/black belts so I'll be able to see how I go with the electronic scoring then, if you have the time to list a few drills that might help then I'd appreciate it.

Lad Gorg - I think the reason a lot of my kicks were slow and had no power (at least in this fight) was because of my fitness, about mid way through the second round I was buggered, when he clinched me I had to really focus on staying standing because I had enough trouble holding myself up without him adding any more weight onto me. Obviously not all my slow kicks are due to that and I need to work on making them faster and also retracting faster and less predictable as you've said. Thanks for the idea about doing the drill on the bag, I can work on them at home with BOB as a replacement for the heavy bag.

I knew my fitness was below par going in but I didn't think it was that bad, and I've started training more now to get my strength and fitness up, thanks to all who've commented so far, class starts back in 2 days and you've given me plenty to think about and work on to improve myself, as funny as it might seem this fight has been my best one to date, I like to think I'm getting better each time I step onto the mat.

 

Just gonna pitch in my two cents. Some of it has already been said I know but...

1. You're punching too much. You seem to be quite tall therefore you don't want to get in close range. It opens you up to getting kicked by your opponent.

2. You have the advantage of reach, employ more counter-attacks instead of facing your opponent head on. Think of sport TKD as a game of chess. You have to have a strategy and employ it.

3. Don't clash. By clashing, I mean you bring your leg up to block your opponents kicks. As you progress in rank, you'll notice your opponents will be kicking harder and you risk injury by clashing. If you forfeit the match due to injury, you won't win.

4. Relax, the more tense you are, the slower you are. Look at the people in the ring behind you at around 5:05. They bounce to keep their bodies in motion and you'll notice their kicks are fluent, because they are relaxed.


You didn't do bad. You're just starting your training so don't worry too much, you'll improve. Your kicks will become more fluent and your speed will increase with time. Best of luck and hope you see you post back with more vids of your comps.

 

Thanks man, I tend to throw punches if I end up too close to kick or when I get rushed so they get too close for my range, so I usually punch then try to shuffle back into my scoring range, being a south paw means I tend to get caught up when we both kick at the same time and I've got plently of bumps and bruises on my knee/shin from colliding in kicks so I need to be work on seeing it coming early so I can drop my left foot down and come thru with my right or do like a jumping switch kick and connect with my right foot on their hopefully open hogu.. Or at least that's the plan.

I usually try to stay relaxed and moving around on the mat but when my fitness let me down everything pretty much went out the window except trying to stay upright and score shots, I try to always be up on my toes but it didn't work out that time, the mat behind us was the black belts and I try to watch their matches throughout the day to see how they do things and to see if there's anything I can pick up on to use in my matches.

 

Thanks, stances and distance is something I'm still trying to better each time I spar, whether it be in class or in tournament but it still needs work, I go into matches thinking I should use more front foot side kicks when the opportunity arises but sadly I rarely/never do, I need to work on that too, I was a yellow belt in that match (I've since graded to blue) so sadly there was no head kicks, except the one I accidently caught him with under the jaw and lost a point for, my instructor reckons axe kicks would be my best style of head kick cause of my long legs and flexibility, i can nearly do front splits when I'm completely warmed up.

I still haven't gotten around the whole stop throwing my arms/hands out to block kicks, he threw a hard kick in one of the rounds and it caught me around the elbow when I blocked it and it jarred my whole arm, and I was trying to shake it off without making it too noticeable.