How to defend your face as you enter with your own attack.
Eat a Lot of Jabs to the Face?
A great number of professional UFC fighters do.
Almost every time I watch an MMA fight I see fighters who come in with their attack, typically punches and/or kicks and they leave the center line to their face wide open and get punched right square in the face.
Sometimes it is a light jab and other times it is a fight changing rear hand.
The bottom line is that entering while defending is a fundamental skill and after watching the video above and reading this article you will have a more solid foundation in that fundamental skill.
Why Do Fighters Get Hit on the Way In?
Plain and simple. Both fighters are moving forward either with a step or a lean and throwing a straight-line or center-gait punch.
Maybe one of them is throwing a circular punch but that doesn’t matter to our scenario.
What happens is the non-striking hand is floating around somewhere, out to the side, down by their hip, etc. This leaves the path directly to their face wide open.
POP! Right in the kisser!
Once again allowing that non-striking hand to float around aimlessly is a lack of fundamentals.
That hand needs to have a purpose. And that purpose is defending the other fighter’s jab or cross or other punch.
Enter the Mirror Drill
The mirror drill will fix this issue.
- Stand facing the mirror in your fighting stance.
- Throw a lead hand jab (fist, palm, or eye strike) right at the reflection of your face
- Now freeze
- Now take your non-striking hand and put it in-between your face and that hand coming at your face
Simple.
Now from this point forward whenever you throw a strike do this.
If your opponent punches at the same time as you your non-striking hand will parry or intercept their punch… and since they probably don’t do this drill your punch will get through.
Technique Pointers
Like everything start slow and build up speed.
- Keep the gait closed! You should be looking between the fingers of your hand at the eyes of your mirror reflection (or opponent). This way the center gait is closed and also your hand isn’t too low.
- Push that hand far out in front of your face, really! FAR! The closer it is to your face the more likely your opponent’s punch will smash through it and your own hand will smash your face.
- Leave it up until you are safe. Keep that hand in place till you are out of range or until you have closed in and clinched them.
- Spread your fingers slightly but keep your thumb close. You don’t want the punch to catch your thumb and sprain it.
- Create a 45° angle with your fingers, hand, and forearm. This way the punch deflects off.
- Never ever ever swat at punches. Keep your hand in position. Swatting at punches takes your hand out of position and leaves you open for follow up punches, aka combinations.
- Train your right and left leads.
Train with a Partner
Once you feel confident that you are keeping your hand in place with the mirror drill add a partner.
The partner throws slow rhythmic punches straight at your face as you enter with your jab.
Your parry hand is now catching and deflecting their punches every time, great job!
Once you have the hang of this have your partner speed up a little and simulate sparring dynamics with some speed, rhythm changes, double jabs, etc.
Final Thoughts
Fundamentals fundamentals fundamentals!
Everyone wants to work on the fancy crap but being amazing at the fundamentals is what sets you leaps and bounds over everyone else.
Until next time,
Brian
