How do I set up a sliding/hopping power sidekick?

Question

How do I set up a sliding/hopping power sidekick?

In 2 and 1 videos, you can see Scott Adkins demonstrate the sliding/hopping power sidekick. I have been trying to do this, but every time I do it, my opponent just moves out of the way - and then smiles.

I watch a lot of Kickboxing/Muay Thai videos on Youtube, and I have almost never seen anyone successfully pull off the sliding/hopping power sidekick. I have seen many successful turning/spinning back/side kicks as opposed to the one in question, perhaps because the distance covered in a turning/spinning back/side kick is much less than the sliding/hopping power sidekick.

The closest kick to the sliding/hopping power sidekick is the hopping tip/front kick with the back leg (this is done by Saenchai all the time - see here). It is usually set up by a tip/front kick from the front leg, and then when the opponent starts to move forward after getting hit, they immediately do a hopping tip (raise the front leg, slide forward pushing off with the back leg, and then throw a power tip with the back leg). In this case, the first left leg tip/front kick is the set up.

What kind of setup is needed to do one of these kicks?

Answer 1

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Scott Adkins is an actor. The closest I've found to him being in a prizefight is here, which is pretty obviously a staged/choreographed fight. The videos in class are him kicking someone who is standing in one place to let him kick them. Front-leg side kicks are used in kick-boxing, and a bit less often in MMA, but the most common use is as a way of keeping distance, pushing the advancing opponent away, and often with the chambered kick acting as a threat, forcing the opponent to break their rhythm as they anticipate the incoming kick, and allowing the kicker to change the direction more readily when an opponent side-steps.

If you wanted to land this kick in the ring, I suspect that you will have to:

• Chamber it the same as a front teep, with the knee up, only twisting into the side kick as you kick
• Be able to transition into another technique and/or re-target your kick if your opponent moves
• Practice other moves with a similar slide-in step so that your opponent doesn't have a clear signal of what technique you're about to launch

You can find some discussion of how to set up a sliding side-kick here, apparently involving Jamie Faulding and a match where he pulled it off. To summarize the narrative, Faulding demonstrated several times in the match that he could fire off a quick front-leg side kick, and he noted that his opponent started backing up when he started throwing the kick. He then did several fakes in succession, sliding forward each time, to back his opponent up to the cage wall. He then fired off a final higher sidekick. His opponent obligingly backed up, hit the cage wall, and rebounded into the kick, lowering his guard to absorb the expected side kick to the midsection, only to instead take it to the face.