Dutch Kickboxing
The Dutch competitive school of kickboxing, born from Kyokushin karate meeting Japanese kickboxing. It is built on hand combinations finished with a kick.
Quick Facts
NetherlandsCharacter & Origin
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Dutch Kickboxing
About Dutch Kickboxing
Dutch kickboxing is not a style with a single founder but a national competitive school that formed in the 1970s from the meeting of two sources: Kyokushin karate, which had a strong base in the Netherlands, and Japanese kickboxing as taught by Kenji Kurosaki at the Mejiro Gym in Tokyo. Two key figures are documented. Jan Plas trained under Kurosaki and opened the Mejiro Gym in Amsterdam in 1978; Thom Harinck ran the Chakuriki school. Together they had already founded the Dutch association NKBB in 1976, which gave the sport its organisational frame — hence that year here rather than the date of any one gym. Technically the school rests on a dense combination of punches finished with a kick, most often a low kick to the thigh. Where muay thai builds on the clinch, knees and single heavy blows, the Dutch school imported footwork, head movement and the three-to-five-punch series from boxing, with the kick slotted in as the last link. From this come its legendary volume of sparring and the so-called Dutch pyramids, a conditioning drill built on repeated series on the pads. The school broke through internationally with the K-1 tournaments of the 1990s, and fighters such as Rob Kaman, Ernesto Hoost and Peter Aerts made it the dominant approach in stand-up fighting. Today it is part of basic training in most European gyms and in the striking component of many MMA clubs.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.