Strategies for landing head kicks

[the combat analyst]

Strategies for landing head kicks

It's time to take a look at how to learn head kicks, specifically a roundhouse kick to the head of your opponent. In combat sports head kicks are a more flashy technique designed to knock out your opponent in infatic fashion. As rare as a head kick knockout can be it's time to take a deeper look into them and how they are set up.
A very consistent theme you'll find in this breakdown is that the majority of successful head kicks hit their opponent on their rear side. Meaning the kick will strike your opponent on the same side as their rear arm.
And this is because your opponent does not have a shoulder in the way like how they do on the lead side. And this factor plays majorly into land head kicks. And another thing I have noticed when studying head kick knockouts is just how strikingly similar many of them are.
An astounding majority of them happen on the opponent's rear side leaving only their rear hand as their main defensive weapon.

There are plenty of ways to set up head kicks but let's get into what I see as the most high percentage.
The first way is to kick your opponent's body repeatedly, causing them to lower their guard and then when they expect a body kick, you kick them in the head of course.
But what fascinates me with this set up specifically is how many head kicks knockouts happen with what's called a naked kick. Generally naked kicks are ill-advised because when a fighter throws a naked kick they throw the kick by itself with nothing before it to set up the kick.
However, very many head kick knockouts have come from naked kicks.
Some examples include

Rashad Evans ko over josh salmon

Gabriel Gonzaga’s KO over Mirko cro cop

Valentina shevchenko’s ko over Jessica eye

Holly holm’s ko over bethe correia

Alessio di chirico’s ko over Joaquin Buckley

Abdul razak alhassan’s ko over Alessio di chirico

Marlon chito Vera’s ko over brad Pickett

Ovince saint preux’s ko over Corey Anderson

Ian Machado Garry's ko over Daniel Rodriguez

Amber leibrock’s ko over Martina jindrova

Rose namajunas’ ko over Zhang weili
https://youtu.be/r-kXLCObXg8?si=6_S-dij3-8irnzNE
Even legendary fighter Shinigami scored a naked head kick ko on streetbeefs
https://youtu.be/tdRKym5HBjA?si=WQuP-qpUZ2NAE9Ws

What all of these knockouts have in common is that those who won used a naked kick to strike their opponent, meaning there was no strike thrown in an immediate combination before the head kick to set It up. They simply threw a lone kick at their opponent and it landed.
Another commonality they have is that they all kicked their opponents rear side.
And stance doesn't matter. I Included examples of kicks from the rear and front leg examples of southpaw vs orthodox matchups even examples where the orthodox fighter is the one who throws the kick. But regardless in every example they all struck their opponents rear side with a naked kick and knocked them out.

In this example with Ignacio bahomondes, Ignacio starts out in an orthodox stance but then switches to a southpaw stance right before he head kicks his opponent.
https://youtu.be/X2Z1En-eAgk?si=v8JqJlSoTW03cy8Q
This switch in stances allows for him to kick his opponents rear side just like in all of the other examples. But this example with Ignacio stood out to me because it shows just how vulnerable your opponent's rear side is to head kicks because he didn't have to fight the entire fight from a southpaw stance. He simply had to switch his stance and kick his opponent's r
ear side in order to land a naked head kick.

 

[the combat analyst]

But how does a fighter throw such an obvious kick at the opponent's head and expect it to land?
Well the key in setting up the kick in many of these cases was two things. They utilized body kicks over and over to get their opponent to lower their guard first, then they mixed things up by throwing a kick to the head. Another detail is that when throwing a roundhouse many are taught to swing their arm on the side they are throwing the kicking. This is meant to act as a counter balance, but it can also be mistaken by the opponent as a punch causing them to have a reaction to a straight strike that is not coming, making them more vulnerable to the head kick. This example is prevalent in Abdul razak alhassan's ko over Alessio di chirico and Ian Machado Garry's ko over Daniel Rodriguez.
In both examples the person getting knocked out actually moved their head into the head kick because they mistook the swing in their opponent's arm as a punch.

The next setup to a head kick I want to talk about is throwing a head kick after there is a break in the clinch.
Some examples in include

Petr Yan's ko over Uriah Faber

Benoit Saint Denis’s ko over matt frevola

And Alexander volkov’s head kick ko in bellator


What all of these knockouts have in common is that once the clinch was broken the winning fighter followed up with a head kick almost immediately once again to the opponent's rear side.

This last example of a head kick from the clinch is a much more uncommon one and may be harder to replicate.
Yves Edwards ko over josh Thompson


Now the third setup is probably my favorite, and it is simply throwing a cross then following up with a rear roundhouse kick to the head.
Both strikes are coming from your rear side and this combination works best when striking your opponent's rear side
Some examples include

Bryan battles ko over takashi sato

Alex caceres’s KO over Julian erosa

Justin gaethje’s ko over Dustin porier

And probably the most famous and shocking example is when Leon Edwards ko’d kamaru Usman


In all of these examples the winning fighter used a cross to get their opponent to slip or move their head away from the cross. But by slipping the cross they move their head right into a follow up head kick. So the cross is utilized to set up the rear head kick once again to the opponent's rear side.
And this can also be done with a jab too.
You utilize the jab to get your opponent to slip right into a high roundhouse this time the kick comes from your lead leg.
Examples of this include

Edmen shabazyan’s ko over brad Tavares

Donald cerrone’s ko over Melvin guillard

TJ dillashaw’s ko over Cody garabandt
https
://youtu.be/725Asd5cPGk?si=qHv5uFnSoVml3xlP

 

[the combat analyst]

And those are just a few ways of setting up head kicks. Some fighters like to look low at their opponent's body or legs, convincing them that a low strike is coming. Then while looking they go up high for a head kick.
Another setup can also be throwing a cross to the body to get your opponent to lower their guard then following up with a rear high roundhouse kick to the head. As seen in Josh Thompson's KO over Nate diaz.


Now despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of effective head kicks land on a fighters rear side it is still possible to land a head kick on your opponent's lead side.
And one fighter in particular who has a very effective system for this Robert Whittaker.
Whitaker is a fighter who fights from an orthodox stance with his left leg forwards, meaning in most cases if he were to throw a rear roundhouse kick to the head it would strike his opponents lead side. And while head kicks aren't as when they strike a fighters lead side because their shoulder can get in the way Whittaker has a simple combo to get around this.
He will simply throw a jab cross followed by a rear roundhouse kick to the head of his opponent. And as seen in the video below Whittaker can be seen almost spamming this combo at will.



The idea behind this setup is that Whittaker uses that jab cross combo to get his opponent to slip his cross making them move right into his head kick.
But when watching this video you'll come to notice that this combo works especially effective when Whittaker’s opponent is a southpaw with their right leg forwards. This is because if Whittaker were to throw this combination at them the head kick will strike their rear side making them more open because there is no shoulder in the way.
Now the reason Whittaker is able to almost spam this combo is not only because the jab cross is a low risk combination but also because of an inherent benefit roundhouse kicks to the head have.
And that benefit is that they are harder to counter than body kicks and leg kicks.
Let me explain.

When throwing a leg kick the most common defense is to check the kick, painfully blocking with your shin causing more damage to your opponent than yourself. There are other counters to leg kicks as well like stepping deep inside as your opponent kicks to counter with a punch. Or if your opponent kicks to close you can also counter with punches too.
Now when it comes to body kicks you run the risk of kicking your opponent directly in the elbow which is a painful mistake to make, or you run the risk of getting your kick caught by your opponent putting them in a great position to counter you. However when it comes to head kicks there is no traditional counter to them like there is with leg kicks and body kicks. While you will see fighters occasionally pull or lean back from a head kick this is a flashy more high risk maneuver that requires great timing, it also leaves you body and legs exposed. But when it comes to head kicks the most common defense to them is to either step backwards away from the kick or to block the kick with your forearms, still taking the force of the blow directly. And in some cases if the head kick is not blocked directly you can actually still cause damage to your opponent.
In a fight between cung le and frank shamrock, le threw a number of head kicks to shamrock's arms. However despite the fact the shamrock was blocking le’s head kicks he was not blocking correctly, using both arms to take the force of the blow. And this actually led to Shamrock's arm being broken from Cung le’s kicks.

As you can now tell there are in fact many ways to set up head kicks despite it being a more low percentage move to land. In many examples of head kicks knockouts the fighter who knockouts their opponent only really throws one head kick to get the job done. And this demonstrates a very important concept when setting up head kicks and that is patience.
Patience is a very key element in all of martial arts and combat sports. But when It comes to head kicks it is important to work hard on your set up. Meaning you must really take the time to condition your opponent so they effortlessly fall into your trap. So instead of spamming head kicks hoping one will land you must work hard on trapping your opponent so when you do throw your head kick you kn
ow it is going to land

 

[tasteslikechicken]

Push 'em over

 

[zapataxiv]

one old coach I had used to say
"if I am going to kick your head, I am going to kick your leg first." no fills type of guy
his co-coach was all frills they would bigger like a married couple lol

 

[Bullitt68]

The only Cro Cop video in a thread tutorial on head kicking is the time he got kicked in the head by a BJJ guy no one on planet Earth expected to even be able to throw kicks?

 

[wstewart]

Best strategy is to be tall relative to your opponent. If you're short, you'd better bait them into squatting to your level like Kelvin Gastelum did to Israel Adesanya.

 

[GordoBarraBJJ]

Set it up by going to the body and legs????

Or maybe go train with Superbon.

 

[luke2342]

That's an interesting point about the kicks landing on the rear side because of the shoulder block. I've never really thought about that - To me it's a lot faster and less telegraphed to throw the front head kick (Without the switch) but your right that the speed doesn't really matter because the shoulder blocks it.

Especially from a sparring context, I think it's hard to land the right head kick clean because the opponents right hand is usually glued to the head right, and it's a slower more telegraphed kick. But in a lot of these head kick knock outs the hand is there, the guy just blasts through it because a single forearm wont beat a shin.