Thread: Position of the lead hand

I have been experimenting with my guard. I used to keep both gloves up almost touching my cheeks, with the lead glove very slightly forward. I held my hands like this to help the left glove block/parry right hands.

I am now extending my lead glove forward much more (I would say a good 12"). The goal is to make my jab quicker by shortening the distance it has to travel and to also make the punch more difficult to detect. I carry it slightly lower, about chin height. My defense has improved, so I dont use my left glove for defense against right hands as much.

What are your thoughts on the position of the lead glove? Does my reasoning for the change make sense? And where do you guys position your jabbing hand??

I can't jab the way I want to if I hold my lead hand at or above chin level. I like to jab and feint to the body and it just doesn't feel comfortable if my hand is any higher than chest level. I think its alright for me to do this as long as my weight is on my back foot and I make sure to use my shoulder to roll right hands. I feel more balanced as well. I don't know why but having my right hand up near my temple ready to parry jabs helps with this too

good point jahmez, i feel the same way. i like to use the solar plexus jab a lot to mix things up and establish my jab early on in the fight. if you think about it jabbing to the head from a higher hand position isnt the best way to throw, if a fighter moves in and smothers the jab you risk losing power upon connection from the elbow for a large amount of time while executing the punch, the same goes for jabbing to the body but the effect is exagerated by the momentum of your body behind it while your coming down to strike aswell i have a feeling their will be a small amount of wasted movement which would probably be in your the lat on the same side of the punching hand having to pull your arm down with your body from its high position at the start of the punch, and if this lower hand position is going to be where your throwing from, and a high guard is used then theres going to be tells in some or most of your shots, and id rather have tells in my defence which if you think about it probably isnt a good thing either.

also about keeping your weight on the back foot, might not always be a good idea be very careful when you choose to do this because it often leaves you with no where to go, naz used to do this a lot, i think to bait his oponents to come for him knowing this, then he would switch and move over his left side waiting underneath them loaded with a huge uppercut if hed managed to get them to expose the chin reaching for him then they would pay for it , but in my experience its not a bright idea if you need to go anywhere fast while taking your feet with you (which is all the time in boxing), keeping your right up is probably your bodys way of feeling like its compensating but anything you do with your arms to compensate for your legs in that position isnt enough balance has very little to do with your arms theyre like a fine tuning they can help but just a tiny amount, its in the legs among other areas which i wont go into i might be giving too much away, very fascinating stuff this is scraps specialty he has some amazing ways to train the whole system thats at work to do ets job.

Very true about what can happen when keeping my weight on my back foot. Sometimes I find myself feeling like I have to move around too much because of an opponent's pressure. I think having my rear hand up high helps with my balance more mentally than anything because I don't have the greatest head movement in the world and it makes me feel more secure against jabs. I want to learn more from Scrap because I've got the impression that he could answer alot of my questions but he's seems like a pretty mysterious cat and I don't have as much time as I'd like to get on here more often and get to know him. When I let myself go and stop thinking I find myself fighting alot more on the front foot but this tends to lead to me making technical mistakes especially defensively. I'v got a feeling this all has to do with the fact that I have poor forward head posture which can be seen in my walking gait which is something I've read Scrap hinting at when refering to personal styles. According to a chiropractor I had one of the worst spines he'd ever seen. The top was arched forward and there was a curve or something at the bottom of my spine. He compared my xray to a model spine and I could see what he mean't but he was a pretty dodgy character so I'm not sure I could completely trust him. Im sure this has an effect on my style though and is probably one the reasons why I also stand so paralell to my opponent.

The thing is some of the stuff hes working on to just post on forums hed be giving alot of work and time spent on things hes done away, the ideas and practice he puts behind his methods is very unique and has been thought through and through, i dont know anyone who puts so much thought into things like scrap and i dont think many would understand even if he where to post a few ideas, he did a post on speed quite a while back showing jst a few excellent ways he has of training different things and not many could say what it was actually doing and it didnt get quite as much attention as i thought it would which suprised me but it's quite ingeniouse to say the least the more i think about some of the methods he uses the more i realise what it is actually doing, at first it seems quite simple like oh yeh this is doing this and this is doing that but when you continue to think about it and break it down further and further you realise it is very deep stuff and takes a lot of thought and understanding of how the body works to realize whats going on which is often a hell of a lot just in one little exercise, to say he has put a lot of thought into the way he trains the body to do its job is to say the least i personally dont know anyone in boxing or any other combat sport ive done who has studied movement to such a degree as scrap, you can learn a hell of a lot jst from useful little posts/clues dotted all over the forum and the search function would be a good place to start if your wanting to get some tips, and i 100% agree with you i think it is your brain that is telling you to compensate with your right hand ive seen it happen to myself while using a few training principles of scraps my hands want to move to compensate for balance like they have done for years but it just doesnt cut it, you need to be looking in other places more to do with posture than what your arms feel like they should be doing somthing scrap said to me during training while i was doing this myself just corrected everything and made things so clear and trust me its not where your arms are like i said if your arms contribute to balance its just a tiny tiny contribution like a fine tuning the majority of the work is done elsewhere.