I want to start by reminding everyone that anytime that you take action there is consequences to that action.  Assuming that you have no choice but to defend yourself and you find yourself in a critical situation, then the fight will usually start in a standing position and in about 90% of the cases end up with one of the two of them down on the ground. We will break this article up into a 2-part article, this week we will talk about the stand-up fight and in our next session we will talk about the ground fight.  I have friends that often remind me of all the different aspects that go into making up a good athlete and a trained fighter.  They will talk about his hand speed, his flexibility with his kicking drills, his body size, and  other things.  I am often asked which one is the single critical thing about fighting.  Whether it be street fighting or whether it be tournament play, or whatever, and my answer is always none of the above. 

 The single most important factor is distance.  Ground fighters will normally throw some type of hand or foot technique more as a decoy than anything else, although they will hit you with it.  The intent is simply to close the distance and get into a clinch and do a takedown.  Stand-up fighters will close that distance, and when they are close they will use hand techniques.  There are 3 ranges or distances for stand-up fighters.  One is where you are out of range and the technique can't reach you at all.  Normally you are 2 steps away.  This is a good distance that a lot of tournament fighters like to stay in that position, just out of range of their opponent, and at the appropriate time they will move in  and deliver a technique and close the gap.  In social settings, many times you will find you are very close to a person, such as elevators, trains, restaurant settings, etc., and you are so close, in fact, the kicking drills won't work for you.  In that case you have to use hand techniques and be close enough to deliver it.  So you start at a distance, when you are at mid-range, or say one step of an opponent, that is when you use your front kick to keep them off balance to deliver roundhouse kicks, hook kicks, side kicks. Whatever, or if you are a kick-boxer, deliver that front kick right angle with the lead hand to the ribs or whatever and then the third position is whenever you closed that gap and you actually hand deliver elbows and hands.

 I tell many of my young fighters if they want to learn how to use their hand techniques they need to find a good golden gloves gym somewhere or a good boxing coach and box for a 1 1/2 - 2 years.  Boxers as a normal thing only use about 4 basic techniques and then they will deliver many combinations off of that.  They will have a hook, jab, cross, and uppercut, but then they will deliver many variations of that.  They don't use heel palm smash or the knife edge of the hand, ridge hand, which is the first knuckle thrown as a hook. But they use those 4 basic techniques, but they develop speed and combinations and learn distance and fighting in close and are very quick and powerful and learn how to put a shoulder behind the punch, and I think any serious fighter needs to learn boxing technique. 

 Most karate styles do a fairly good job of teaching foot technique.  In my opinion, the Tae-Kwon-Do stylist are superior with their kicking technique.  I would suggest that a young athlete learn flexibility because they master it, and the kicking drills from a good Tae-Kwon-Do instructor.  Again, the kicking drills are excellent for groin attacks, attacking rib cage, front kick underneath that lead jab of a boxer, and back kicks, and for those who are flexible enough to deliver it with speed and power, of course the head kicks and heel kicks.  Not everyone has the flexibility to deliver it with power.   

Along with the kicking drills and hand drills, again, we will talk next week about ground fighting and you got to know that the odds are about 90% certain that you are going to the ground on a street fight and we will cover that in detail in our next article.  As far as stand-up fighters, after you have trained with an instructor that teaches kicking drills and boxed and you should become a part of a system similar to the Okinawan Isshin-ryu.  They don't do the kicking drills, as a usual thing, there are many good kickers in Isshin-ryu as well, but they don't do the kicking drills as well as Tae-Kwon-Do do. 

Then you need to seek balance.  Again, as my friend Bruce Lee used to say any system and every system.  The truth, the balance in your fighting is somewhere in between.  Isshin-ryu is excellent in that it has 50% hands and 50% feet. Any system, whether boxing or Tae-Kwon-Do, they are both deficient, if all they are teaching in the case of a boxer is hand techniques, and in the case of Tae-Know-Do, if they emphasize 70% kicking, that is not a complete system.  You need a balance in your stand-up fight.  In your free-sparring or stand-up fight or street fight, angles are terribly critical.  If you are fighting a very fast fighter, if you throw a technique or a series of techniques (3 or 4 techniques) and stop in front of that fighter, and you have not taken them out with your barrage of techniques, then he is probably going to knock you out at that point.  If he is quick and you stopped in front of him you are a ready target for him.  In our training we draw a V or tape a V on the floor and we have our opponent standing in the middle of that V.  We throw back fists, ridge hands, or straight punches or kicks or whatever, we train our fighters to pass by our opponent, so that even if they misfire with their technique, the opponent can't counter attack.   Of course, many fighters are very good at not letting you pass them or get to their back.  Of course, it is true, whether you are in a stand-up fight or ground fighting, a person to your back, and you are in a very precarious situation.  If you are ground fighting and he has gotten to your backside, or if you are a stand-up fighter, and he has got to your backside, you are in trouble. 

There are many reflex drills that you can use outside the ring without having a partner.  For years, boxers have used the speed bag, and they do that for timing and judging of distance and reflex.  You can get much of the same effect by hanging a tennis ball from a tree limb or with a bungee cord.  The ball moves and it is not stable, so you have a moving target and that is a good drill.  Some of the sticky hand drills that you will find in Kung-Fu are very useful, not only do they block, but they block and they trap and will end up blocking and trapping and striking eight or nine times off of one lead punch.  We have many reflex drills as it pertains to the knife.  We are learning to block and counter, and those are certainly good drills.  One step sparring, where an opponent throws a technique, or you can even do it yourself, where you imagine an opponent throwing a technique, much like a boxer would shadowboxing, and then you react to that technique without them countering.  These are all good reflex drills that you can do if you are injured or out of shape or whatever, these are all good drills you can do.  You can do the shadowboxing for 3 minute rounds; it is very similar to kickboxing or the aerobic workout.  Again, as is always the case, distance is the critical thing.  Do not let people within their arms length of you.  If you are in a dangerous situation, again, in a social setting it is hard sometimes to maintain that distance, but if you are having an altercation or if there are words being exchanged, or if there is reason to think you are in harm stay at least an arms length away from your opponent. You can back up once or maybe even twice, if your opponent is aggressive and continues to close that gap then you have to take action, because regardless of your hand speed or your skill level you let that person close that gap and throw the initial move and you have to be very quick to close that gap and stop the technique.  If an altercation is inevitable then you should strike first and take the initiative in the fight.  As a novelist, if you have not had any formal training, and you are faced with a fight, then I would say the fury of the tiger should prevail, meaning throw as many techniques as hard and fast as you can throw them without thought about how hard you may get hit, or the fact that you may even get hit.  Because your salvation will be your speed and your natural ability and your strength and power you have.  So if you not a trained fighter then throw it as hard, fast and quick as you can.  If you are a trained fighter, you have to watch, cause even as a trained fighter if you are not careful, they will close the gap quickly and throw 5 or 6 techniques and you are in trouble. The distance thing again is critical. 

There are 3 or 4 basic things such as a snap kick, heel palm smash, eye gouges, elbow strikes, and don't try to do the high kicking techniques in street fighting cause you got to understand even with the big people, if you hit them with it, and you don't knock them out, they are going to close that gap, and they are going to take you to the ground, and you are going to be in trouble if you don't have a balanced attack.

 

Pete Mills,
Grandmaster, Isshin-ryu Karate