Scott Adkins Answers Martial Arts Training Questions From Twitter

Hi, I'm Scott Adkins, an actor and a marshall artist

and this is Training Support.

[gentle music]

@TispyLikeJenga asks

How do MMA fighter take kicks to the shin?

I stub mine and I'm TKO'd by the coffee table.

I know the feeling.

Every time that I've been away

and made a movie for a few months,

I come back and I start training again and it hurts.

If you're kicking the Thai pads

without your trousers on,

it takes a while to get used to it,

and also if you don't do it it feels like your shins

quickly become like butter again.

So, Thai pads are what Thai boxers use mostly for kicks.

They're long pads like this

that you slip your whole forearm into it,

and they're great for hitting with round kicks

and then for the body you can hold them against you body,

and so you punch them and you kick them

but they're very tough material made out of leather,

it takes a while to get used to kicking those

with a bare shin when you're a beginner.

Just kicking the Thai pads will make your shins much harder,

but there are other ways to harden the up

like rolling sticks and kneeling on beer bottles

and all sorts of stuff like that,

but the truth is nothing can prepare you

for how much it would hurt when you kick someone

in the shin as hard as you can with your shin.

In a fight, the adrenaline is gonna stop you feeling it,

but you're gonna feel it the next day.

@AlanRodriguez9

asks Question for martial artists,

should I ever let a potential attacker

know that you are trained in martial arts?

In this country, the UK, it was said

that if you were an expert in martial arts

and you didn't warn a potential attacker

that you're about to strike you can actually

be in a lot of trouble in a UK Court of Law.

I'm even sure if that still exists any more,

but I do know this story of a black belt

Taekwondo instructor from the UK who was in a pub

and he was getting a bit off someone

and he said to the guy Listen, I must warn you,

that I'm a black belt in Taekwondo.

And then he got knocked out, spark,

just after he gave them the warning.

So, my advice to you is probably keep it a secret.

Surprise is all part of being a good fighter.

Never start a fight, but if you are sure,

if you are positive that there's no way out

and you can't talk your way out of this situation

and that it's gonna go down,

just keep it a secret and knock the other guy out.

@RZA

wow that's the real RZA, that's brilliant.

Kick ass Friday, what movie do you think

has the best fight scene ever?

Great question RZA.

Obviously, I've seen a lot of martial arts films,

as I'm sure you have as well.

One of my favorite fights is from They Live,

the John Carpenter film with Roddy Piper.

I love the extended fight scene they have

in the middle of the movie when Roddy Piper's

trying to get Keith to put the shades on,

and he doesn't wanna put the shades on

and it's a great fight because it's not

about the choreography, it's not about how well it's shot,

it's really about this battle of attrition

where one guy's trying to get the other guy to do something,

and the fight just goes on, and on, and on,

and it doesn't stop, and then you think it's gonna end

and it keeps going, and it keeps going.

And the way they perform it is brilliant,

and it's got those funny moments in there.

That is one of my favorite fight scenes.

It's hard to say that's my favorite fight scene,

but certainly that is one of my all time favorites fights.

They Live.

@GetAGripGym Possibly stupid question for gymnasts,

when you twist in your tumbling,

do you have to spot something

like you do in a turn?

You do have to spot, not only in gymnastics

but also in martial arts.

If I'm gonna throw a spinning kick,

before I throw the kick I need to turn my head all around

and spot my target so that I see

who or what I'm gonna kick before I kick it.

You don't wanna be kicking blind.

And the same thing with gymnastics

with like a straight back summersault with a twist.

You go up, you get the height first,

wherever the head goes the body will follow.

So you twist your head, you need to see the floor

so that you understand where it is

and that you can land there.

One of the things you need in gymnastics

and also in martial arts is spatial awareness, you know,

one of the things you need to do is spot.

@Shelli239 Boxing or kickboxing question,

which stance has an advantage, orthodox or southpaw?

And is it worth knowing both?

It's generally thought that a southpaw

has the advantage over an orthodox fighter.

So, an orthodox fighter's gonna be someone

who's right-handed like me, and you're gonna stand

with your right hand back, this is the power side,

maybe your right leg is the power side.

Typically a left-handed person,

so he's gonna stand the other way

and the power hand is gonna be the left.

Most people are right-handed,

so if you take your average gym,

the majority of people that are training in that gym

are gonna be right-handed.

It stands to reason that the southpaw,

the left-handed guy, is gonna have more experience

fighting a right-handed guy.

But to answer your question,

it's definitely worth understanding and knowing

how to fight in both stances,

and to be able to throw strikes

from an orthodox position and a southpaw position,

and what I try to do as an orthodox fighter

is I will switch stance just before throwing a strike,

and if you're dealing with someone who's not very versed

in that type of thing they have to readjust

and in that split second maybe that's just enough time,

hit him with some strikes that he doesn't see coming

because you've changed your stance

and you're coming from a different perspective.

@Nicolee_Gee asks question for martial artists,

crescent kicks, straight leg or chamber?

For those of you who don't know,

a crescent kick is where I would bring up my knee,

you can either do an outside crescent kick,

with the outside of the foot,

or you can do an inside crescent kick

with the inside of the foot.

It's called a crescent because it moves

either inwards or outwards.

You need to chamber the leg.

If you throw a straight leg,

for me that's gonna be much slower

than if you begin the movement with a bent knee.

What I like to do with the crescent kick and with hook kick,

is I like to chamber the knee and hold my foot in

so that I can kick faster or swing through faster,

and then at the last minute I like to flick it out

so it comes out very loose, almost like a flicking motion.

It works perfectly with a hook kick,

but also I think for the crescent kick

you should bring it up with the knee bent

and then flick out the outside of the foot

so that you're hitting with much more torque and speed.

I would suggest that if you're gonna do a crescent kick,

you do it with the knee bent.

@EllyMagero asks So, yesterday during my training,

I decided to do the round kick.

I wanna learn how to combine the round kick

and the upper cut.

To follow up the round kick with an upper cut

would be a bit of a strange technique

to use in my opinion.

What I think you'd be better served doing,

a lead upper cut off the lead arm,

and then you can come through with the round kick.

Now this is a technique that I like to do actually,

a corkscrew uppercut.

So, you've got your standard uppercut

which is just coming straight up,

but the corkscrew uppercut,

it comes out a bit further, you twist up,

but as I do it I step off the center line

so I'm hitting my opponent but I'm stepping off this way.

What I'm doing is I'm stepping across the line

of his body and opening up his body to a lovely round kick

to the body or even a round kick to the head.

Step across on the outside of his leg,

and throw that round kick into the mid section.

And actually, you see Connor McGregor do this punch a lot,

the corkscrew upper cut.

He sort of jumps forward and to the side as he throws it,

and he gets close to his opponent

and he can hit them with one of his powerful left strikes.

@Melissa_Heist Okay, kickboxing question,

round kick to the head, is it okay

to make contact with foot instead of the shin?

The shin gets me in too damn close.

Well, I know what you're saying, Melissa.

You don't wanna be too damn close.

If you can kick him in the head with a shin,

that's preferable to the foot

because the shin is much harder.

Certainly if you're kicking to the body, into the leg,

you don't wanna catch them with your foot,

because what you can do is sometimes bend your foot back,

even break your foot in some cases, that happens a lot.

So, if you can kick to the head and hit them with your shin,

that's gonna be preferable to the foot.

But still, the foot is gonna do the job

should you hit them hard enough

and they don't see it coming.

@Rinnthehuman asks Can you teach me how

to properly drop kick?

And the answer is no,

because I'm sat here on my chair with these in my ears.

I don't actually know what you mean by dropkick.

Perhaps you mean the ax kick?

Really what you need for an ax kick is to be very flexible

so that you can bring your leg all the way up,

and then of course you're gonna contract your hamstrings

when you get to the height and bring your heel down

on your opponent's head.

You need to be flexible.

It's very easy to pull your hamstring

if you're not warmed up,

'cause as soon as you get to the height

and your hamstring is fully stretched,

you're gonna contract it and you're gonna bring

the heel down on the guy's head, hopefully.

It's a good kick.

@Jmastinef I'm contemplating starting

at home kickboxing training, any recommendations?

Yes, Justin.

I recommend that you go to my YouTube channel.

Everyone was always asking me to do kicking tutorials.

So, I recommend you go to the Scott Adkins

Official YouTube channel, you will be able

to learn some kicks from Scott Adkins himself.

What a plug, what a plug.

BigRam27 asks How do you split your week

between martial arts training and lifting weights?

Frankly, I'd die, I'm adding that bit,

I think that's what he meant, for a body like Boyka's.

Muscle mass and martial arts don't go hand in hand.

It can slow you down.

Yes, you'll be stronger, you'll be more powerful.

But, it's also a lot more weight to carry around

and you'll probably gas out quicker.

Obviously I make movies,

and people expect you to look a certain way.

First time I played Boyka I was opposite Michael Jai White

who's a big guy, so I wanted to put on

as much muscle mass as I could.

The way I'll split up the week

is I will normally weight train

on a Sunday and a Monday,

and then on Tuesday I'll do my martial arts,

Wednesday and Thursday I'll do some more bodybuilding,

weight training, and then on Friday I'll do martial arts,

and then I'm gonna have Saturday off.

That's typically how I split up the week.

Four days of weight training and two days of martial arts.

But if I'm gonna film that's more martial arts heavy,

or if I wanna be a bit lighter on the feet,

I'll probably up the martial arts and cardio training,

and a bit less on the resistance training.

@Yagatomo_ this knee injury has slowed down

my entire existence.

How did Boyka manage to 180 degree spin

into an extended knee block that caused

the Colombian dude's shin to snap in two?

[tense music]

I know where you're coming from mate.

Listen, I tore my ACL in my left knee.

It took me a good year to get back to normal.

Actually, I tore my ACL and then I had to do three films.

Universal Solider, I did El Gringo,

and then I did The Expendables 2.

All with no ACL, I don't know how I did it.

By the time I got to do Expendables 2,

it was a winter in Bulgaria.

Every morning I woke up in agonizing pain,

but I just had to get on with it,

and throw kicks at Jason Statham.

When I did get the surgery done,

I had to take at least nine months off of full contact,

and I had to rehab it as best as I could.

So, if you've got knee problems mate,

what I suggest is that you really need

to build up the muscles around the knee

that are gonna hold that in place.

The stronger your leg is,

the stronger your knee's gonna be.

If you can build up to doing piston squats,

which is where you have one leg up in the air,

all your weight's on the bad knee,

and you can go all the way down to the bottom

and push yourself all the way up to the top on one leg,

then you know that your knee is gonna be fixed.

Yeah, and Boyka managed to do it, I don't know.

It was choreographed.

@Tomcomm

Hi Scott, how did you build

so much mass to play Boyka, but stay so agile?

Did you train like a bodybuilder to gain mass?

Actually yeah, I did train like a bodybuilder to gain mass.

When I was first starting my weight training journey,

I had the Joe Weider Encyclopedia,

which, you know, things have changed since then,

but I've still kept those principles

of body building really.

If you wanna add muscle to your frame,

you need to be putting your muscles

into progressive overload,

you need to keep lifting heavier weight

in order to put muscle onto your frame.

But, you're right, it was very difficult.

When I did the first Boyka movie,

and the reason I wanted to put the muscle mass on

was because I'm the bad guy,

and Michael Jai White's the good guy,

and he was so much bigger than me,

I really wanted to put on as much muscle as possible

because I just felt like I wasn't gonna be

enough of a threat.

I wouldn't be able to intimidate him if I was as,

you know, normal me.

So, I put on as much muscle as I could

over the course of six months.

Yeah, it was a lot of pressure on the joints.

Obviously Boyka does a lot of fancy kicks,

he's very agile, so if you're doing a back summersault

and you're carrying around an extra six kilograms of muscle,

it's certainly, you feel it on the knees,

you feel it on the back, you feel it everywhere.

It's a lot harder, but back then I was 27

and I was a beast and somehow managed

to keep all the kicks that I was doing

and then up my game and learn some even crazier ones,

and still carry around that muscle mass,

but it's not easy and it's a young man's game.

Okay, so that's it.

Thank you Twitter for all your questions,

and thank you WIRED for letting me give you

some martial arts training support.