Gameplay Study: Beginner LMA Taekwondo and Kickboxing

• LMA Curriculum

In this video, two LMA practitioners are running through two different sparring games. The first is a modified taekwondo game where you're only allowed to kick. The target areas are the body and legs. Clean kicks to the body score two points, and clean kicks to the legs score one point. Any kicks are allowed to the body, but for the legs, only turning kicks (round kicks). No strikes to the knees are permitted. Blocking, parrying, and catching kicks with hands are valid defenses while checking, parrying, and canceling kicks with legs are also allowed. Chest-to-chest clinches are permissible, but grabbing is prohibited. Participants have the freedom to shift between stances.

The second game is kickboxing with no head shots. Instead of targeting the head, the emphasis shifts to attacking the shoulders. Strikes to the legs and body remain in play, along with catching kicks. However, clinches are limited to brief durations. Participants switch stances every round. As a precaution, headgear is employed to safeguard against accidental injuries, particularly to the eyes.

Each game explores different skills and different ranges of distance while building off each other.

It's important to spotlight the practitioners' experiences. The practitioner in striped shorts is an activist and organizer who has only trained a total of nine hours. Their martial arts experience was limited to several months of BJJ at a Renzo Gracie affiliate, which they immediately discontinued after learning more about Renzo. Their nine hours of LMA encompassed warm-ups, cool-downs, mobility, flexibility, rehab, fundamental movements, footwork, stance, blocks, turns (slips), jabs, straights, hooks, uppercuts, teeps, turning kicks (round kicks), side kicks, sparring, and knowing where they are in space without having to look (they never ran into anything). During the day of filming, they were introduced to the spin back kick (spinning back kick) and encouraged to incorporate it into the games—which they did. By the 20th hour of training, that kick will look drastically different, not only in execution but timing.

In context, it's incredible how much they've learned in that short time, but that's what can happen when you allow the brain and body to learn as one through play.