Calf Kick Pic (Patreon)

By Sam (@StuffFromSam)

Here's a great picture of Kai Asakura "checking" a calf kick from Kyoji Horiguchi. I put "check" in quotes because instead of the kicker's ankle landing on the blocker's shin or knee, it hits their ankle and foot. It is not uncommon for this to knock people off balance, much like a judo footsweep.

Perhaps with the calf kick being popularized so much during the pandemic and we've been out of the gym, we haven't been able to see this kick in person or play around with it. We also all have varying degrees of how well we can visualize a move.

This picture then is an excellent snapshot of where a low calf kick lands when the opponent picks up their leg. This isn't to say this is the only way to check a kick—for the calf kick, the most successful block has been to turn your foot out without lifting it up. This is something you'll see from Max Holloway.

What's been difficult for people to comprehend purely in their minds outside of the gym has been height. Where on the body something lands. The lower the kick is thrown, the lower it lands when you pick up your leg.

Imagine a karate leg sweep; it's so low on the leg if you pick your leg up, it's not going to hit your shin or knee—it'll miss your leg altogether. However, though this is easier to imagine because the form looks so different from a traditional leg kick, it's not about what the kick looks like but where it lands. If you aim for the first floor, if you pick up your leg, it'll miss altogether. If you aim for the second floor, it'll hit the first floor. And if you aim higher on the leg, like for the thigh, when someone picks up their leg, you will either end up hitting their knee or the thickest part of their shin. You'll be hurting, not them. Aim for the fifth floor, and you hit the fourth.

Justin Gaethje does a great job of kicking all up and down the leg to confuse opponents who never know how to check the kick. Should I turn it out, should I pick it up? If I pick it up, how high do I pick it up?

People think leg kicks are all the same, but your legs are the longest part of your body. There are a lot of targets on a leg. Imagine if we consider a kick to the body to be the same as a kick to the head because it's all part of the torso? But as far as the distance from the middle, head and calf are equivalent. A kick to the thigh is to the calf what a kick to the body is to the head. Yet we spend more time being specific about kicks and strikes in general above the waist and use very broad terms for the legs, which is part of the confusion and why people are not differentiating the calf/ankle/foot from the knee/thigh.