Follow Along JKD Footwork with Instruction

Importance of Stance & Footwork

Your footwork is the platform that you fire all of your attacks from, if it isn’t solid neither will your strikes be. You can’t fire a cannon out of a canoe.

Your footwork is also your best defense. If you can stay just out of range of your opponent’s striking range then you can easily avoid their attacks, let them overreach and get off balance and then go in for the kill.

Your stance is the foundation of your footwork. If you have a poor stance there is just no way that you will have great footwork.

Bruce Lee emphasized what he called the small phasic bent knee stance. My version of it is below:

Stand at roughly a 45 degree angle to your opponent

Your feet should be about 1 and a ½ times shoulder width

Your feet should be at roughly a 45 degree angle to your opponent (either parallel or close to it)

Obviously your hands need to be up but I cover that in other articles / videos

Footwork Drills

Instructions:

30 – 60 seconds for each drill

1 set of each drill is enough

If you have more time to train move on to another Train at Home topic

Drill # 1 Forwards and Backwards

You will be moving forwards and backwards. To go forwards push off of your back foot and to move backwards push off of your front foot.

Your goal is to maintain the 3 elements of your stance as you move forwards and backwards. If you are successful then start throwing some jabs while you do your footwork and/or move faster.

Drill # 2 Lateral Footwork

Same as above but now when you move to your right push off of you left foot and vice versa.

Drill # 3 The Box Drill

This drill incorporates all 4 of the previous directions. It is just harder because you are now making transitions from lateral to forward and backwards. Go both directions around the box.

Drill # 4 Quick 1-2 Steps

You will go around a box like the previous drill but you will do 2 directions very quickly with a brief pause. For instance: forward to right as fast as you can. Then backwards and left as fast as you can. Repeat.

Drill # 5 Quick 1-2 Steps Reverse Direction

Same drill as above but now go the opposite direction.

Drill # 6 Random Shadow Box

Time to play and have fun. You could choose to follow along with me in the video (good luck) or you can just randomly shadow box. This is a drill that all great fighters have done for as long as time itself has existed… there is a good reason.

Summary

All of the best people in the world at anything have one thing in common… they are all masters of the fundamentals. And they all got there by frequent, often daily, training and focused on quality over effort.

Go get your reps and become amazing!

Until next time,

Brian