Landing the Jab

[Chris Nagel]

If someones non commital with a long jab keeping you at arms length for tapping scores keeping you at range or as an ariel ;I think your better off changing your first thoughts and start thinking about when it is returning home into his load position ;get your mind into that timing and follow it right home with a shot thats disguised by his movment;maybe following his elbow then looping up and over his arm and make him pay; or bodily move on it and change the action that way with a disguised first shot from underneath it or something. I like the idea of switching as you move in when off timing things like that because it really does get you in there faster and with full power as you go under his arm and move in with everything,and your safe doing it in that senario.

There you go Chris (just what we were talking about : thats how Sam Soliman should dirive some power finishes for his style.

Hah, hiding in the shadow of his arm. I like your idea of sneaking a power shot shot in before he has time to react. Seeing as this topic deals with a lot of talk about jabs, I'd like to use your idea of following his retracting hand back to set up a counter jab. Let's say our opponent throws his noncommitable jab and we follow it back with our own jab staying as close to his gloves as possible while followint it back and then catching him before he he can react. It's not as powerful as your looping counters or switching, but if you're plan is to discourage your opponent by making believe your punches are too fast then this can help.

Idk if this would be a good idea if you're focused on creating countering opportunities, but it can help if you're opponent was giving you more than you can handle.

I met a trainer on the weekend who recommended bending the left wrist a little rather than holding it rigid and using it to get around straight punches a bit - just as an unusual kind of jab.

Where I'm from everyone tries to throw everything straight but he was from the UK and had a very different style to anything I've seen before. Unusual jab but seemed handy for countering.

I thought about this too, not about curving your jab just by bending your wrist, but by curving the path that your jab travels. I think that a stance like the one that Thomas has described would allow the most flexibility when it comes to jabbing. You would be able to see your opponent's punches coming and you would be in a good position to defend and counter, while the typical stance that you see these days contradicts this and would be a perfect target for a curved jab. So I save me from explaining myself, I'm going to quote Thomas on this one:

What you first need to know is that every guard has openings. Every single one. it is up to you to find those openings. you want to first get a good understanding of the target areas of the body and the angles that lead to them. for every opening there is an invisible plane that your fist travels along like a pipeline which leads to the opening. in order to land you must put yourself in sync with the angle which leads into the opening you see. It’s very important to use dynamic punches. You will have to adjust your punches slightly shortening them or lengthening them so that you are in sync with the appropriate angle or pipeline into the body. you will also have to adjust where you are in relation to your opponent with footwork i.e. you may have to move more so to your left in order to land a left hook or more so to your right to land a right uppercut. So its important that you be able to adapt to the changes your opponent will present with his movements around the ring and with his body in general. you want to punch with the idea to get past his guard. Don’t punch just to punch. I see alot of kids just punching for the sake of punching and they will never get past a guard doing this.

Let's say for instance that you're up against a typical boxer of the square hands up high guard, often there are plenty of little openings that present itself. Jab/straight right to the solar-plexus, jabbing right between their gloves, curving your jab around their left or right gloves, and the rising jab. Your footwork also comes into play to give you the angle that you'll need to land your punch. It's your stance that gives you your options. With a good stance you'll be able to jab repeatedly, you can advance or retreat, circle left or right, pivot, sidestep, hit with either fist and see your opponent's punches coming. When your punch lands you need to aware of how your opponent responds to it. If you land a curved jab around their right hand and they react by raising their right glove to ward off your left, then you have created an opportunity to go for their liver, short ribs, or in their solar-plexus. This is what you would want to suss out before hand.

Every guard has it's opening and so does every punch that is thrown. Learning how to make your opponent miss their punches while staying within range to land your punch while being aware of the opening as it's presented is part of smart boxing. You may then want to think about how you would land your best punch, and the conditions that it requires. The big piece of it is what Grey and Thomas have often talked about is to create opportunities with your defence. There are many different ways of doing this. Go for it!