When you talk about combatives, it can’t get more simple than the five basic moves of boxing: jab, cross, hook, upper cut and overhand. But in this article, I wanted to have a little bit of fun with these moves. We’ll do this, by using a couple slight variations you can add to your training and even throw your practice partners and opponents off, by using this sequence of unconventional variants.
The first move is what we call a screw jab, which uses your front fist (we’ll assume a right handed fighter, with a left lead), where you throw out two initial high jabs in order to act as a distraction, and get your opponent to raise their hands higher. This allows you to then rotate and drop your elbow and feed in a jab under their guard.
The second move is a overdramatic overhand right, as we drop our weight, while keeping a solid right angle in our elbow. That is then followed up with a more complex move, but one which can really take your opponent off guard.
Lastly, we set it up by throwing a jab-cross-jab combo. If they land, great, but if they don’t that is fine as well, as they mask the final follow up move which is a spinning back fist. You can do this, by purposefully missing the second jab, and stepping over your opponent’s lead leg. This gives you a head start and rotation point to spin around and deliver a surprising and powerful spinning backfist.
It is important to keep your hands up through the whole rotation, turn your head around to see your target, and whip that back fist around to deliver that blow. Make sure you follow up by completely turning around to face off against your partner at the end, and not stop, where half of your back is facing them.
These three variations of basic moves will keep your training fresh, while keeping your training partners guessing, and at the same time can really catch any opponent by surprise.
To see a video of the whole combo, click here: https://youtu.be/8YfYfpOTJYQ