Change up your muay thai with the lost art of 'shifting'

Here's a post that Daniel drafted but hasn't posted yet. I've been busy with a move this week, and didn't have time to write a post from scratch. I went through this, added my own ideas & tips, so you're stuck with some really great advice, and a few of my snarky comments thrown in for good measure.
 
Definition: Changing foot position and stance in order to make your punches more powerful.

Shifting allows a fighter to remain in constant motion. You can attack, evade, and change leads while remaining rooted, centered, balanced and stable. You'll will be able to change sides and increase speed without sacrificing power. You be able to move faster without bobbing up and down. That bobbing is actually a drain of vital energy. You can change sides so that by the time your opponent realizes what has happened he has been hit many times.

Whether you're boxing, training MMA, or fighting muay thai, you can still switch sides easily and continue fighting without upsetting your  flow. It actually serves to confuse your opponent, throwing both his timing and balance off.

So, you want to throw strikes with significantly more power, eh? Shift your weight as you throw punches and elbows. Energy travels from the ground through every joint of the body and finally into the fists. If you're pivoting your hip while you strike, you're generating toque. If you're shifting your weight, which includes that whole 'mass x acceleration' bit, you're generating more force. If you add that torque to the drive and the shift you're got a little something called compound momentum. But I digress. I mean, what do a couple of muay thai instructors know about physics anyway? We'll save the compound momentum theory for another post.

By never having to re chamber or telegraph an attack, your punches come at you like a rattlesnake strike. Shifting is especially effective in a street fight, or multiple opponent situations, where continuous movement is an imperative. Also, think of this: in the ring, muay thai matches are a sort of gentleman's agreement. Both fighters square off and exchange blows back and forth. I don't care how conditioned I am, I hate getting hit. The less you get hit the odds f you winning and/or surviving go way up. If you shift or drive while you strike you move as you throw - meaning that after you've thrown that punch, you are not in the same place as you were when you started the technique.

Here's a litany of benefits that will improve your fighting abilities when you integrate shifting into your training regimen:

• Trains you to “hit off your move” with either fist, from any direction with power and stability
• Helps you develop “controlled aggression” in your power punching (another post for us to cover)
• Will confuse and frustrate opponents that know how to box or fight. Really effective in muay thai
• Allows you to hit from any position at any angle with either fist powerfully
• Shifting is a lost art that most have forgotten how to do or have never seen or heard of
• Teaches you to stay relaxed as you strike and move without telegraphing your intentions
• Brings your whole body weight explosively into your strikes as you fight
•  Teaches you to fight up close without worrying about what your opponent’s counter will be
•  Trains you to step with your punches instead of dancing around like a ballerina
•  Helps you become comfortable hitting while moving backwards, forward, laterally or diagonally without missing a beat

Shifting will make you a very dangerous fighter with no equal (at least at your gym).  It really will add a completely new dimension to your combinations and fight game. Combinations will flow more easily, and transitions from punches to knees to elbow to kicks will feel much more natural. Shifting trains you to become an ambidextrous fighter, which I cannot evangelize enough. You do not want to be a one-sided fighter.

I'll let Daniel's words send us off here. But as you read this, imagine a large, somewhat scary Hispanic man yelling at no one in particular, with an extra bit of emphasis in the 'And' that start each sentence. If you know Daniel, you understand.

"And finally if you’re not shifting, you’re not fighting as well as you could be, in other words your fighting sucks! And that will make you twice the fighter you are right now! So start shifting when you train; cause you don’t ever wanna meet a fighter who does."

The Confusion of Punching Naked

Every time I teach a new student the martial concepts and principles of fist fighting, they are very surprised at how much information they are given and how much power they are able to generate so quickly. But the students that are the most surprised are those that know how to box. Most have never heard or seen any of the techniques or concepts that I teach on fist fighting.

There are two reasons for this; first what I teach is almost 100 years old if not older, and has been forgotten, not taught or abandoned. Second, most fighters learn the sport of boxing in its modern form due to reason number one. One important thing I want you to consider is that bare knuckle boxing and modern boxing are two different animals. It’s like comparing apples and oranges, they are both fruit but they are different types of fruit. Both types of punching have different goals in mind; therefore have different ways of striking and finishing a fight. So trying to compare the two will just confuse and keep you in the dark, they are both separate and different entities.

Bare-knuckle boxing has been tried and tested in both combat and street-fighting and has stood the test of time. This is why I chose to teach the bare-knuckle form of fighting as opposed to the gloved modern form. It just makes more sense to teach a form of fighting that doesn’t use hand protection to defend itself from attack. Especially, since you won’t be walking around town with gloves on ready to fight. There are concepts and techniques from modern boxing I wouldn’t think of using in a street-fight to defend myself with. For example, I wouldn’t throw jabs or hooks to the head, also I wouldn’t come at my opponent like they do at the beginning of each round. I won’t dance around on my toes against my opponent or hold my hands in a typical boxers guard.

But then again in modern boxing I wouldn’t use many techniques or concepts of bare-knuckle boxing such as head butting, eye gouging, holding, hitting below the belt, rabbit punching, biting, tripping or throwing my opponent to the ground on his head, shoulder or neck. Although both styles of punching may seem similar on the surface, they are miles apart in their tactics, techniques and strategies when it comes to fighting. And those differences make each style both unique and important to pursue separately; that is until you can understand and appreciate each one. “The way you train is the way you will fight” is a saying that holds much truth in both styles of striking.

So if you are training for sport choose the modern form of boxing and if you are training for the self protection aspect choose the bare-knuckle version. I’m sure you will be pleased with the results if you heed my advice and train accordingly. And always remember “The right tool for the right job”, definitely applies here.

Stay safe and train hard.

Daniel Sambrano
www.SuperHeroSystems.com

The Major Purpose of Fistic Instruction

The Arm of Jack Dempsey

The purpose of learning to box is to teach a person to defend himself with his fists.

This is what Jack Dempsey said back in 1950 and wrote about in his classic book “Championship Fighting”. This is one book I read again and again and always come away with something new with each reading.

Today boxing coaches, trainers, and martial arts instructors have all but forgotten the purpose of using the fists to protect and defend one’s self. You see you don’t start with the premise of learning to box for sport or competition, but for self preservation. You learn how to strike powerfully for one purpose and one purpose only, to knock out any assailant that would try to hurt you, by causing enough trauma by way of your fists to their body and head.

Forget about the jab being used as a set up for your more powerful cross, you don’t have the luxury of time for this in a street fight.

And having a strong side and weak side stance just won’t cut it either.

And don’t even dance around your assailant throwing light punches to score points because that ain’t happening.

And whatever you do, don’t throw your punches the way a boxer does you’ll most likely break your hand, because you won't be wearing any gloves or wraps.

What you need to know is how to make a proper fist with your bareknuckles, and how to throw it for maximum power. You also need to know what angles are best to punch from, and what footwork is the most useful in a streetfight. You must develop non-telegraphing strikes that are so dangerous you could permanently damage your attacker instantly.

Learn to fist fight like the champions of old and develop explosive punching power with both fists and learn to be a true pugilist.


Daniel Sambrano

www.SuperHeroSystems.com

BareKnuckled vs Gloved: One thru Five

Here are five facts to think about when training with gloves and wraps for self defense purposes.

If your used to using gloves, you may be in for a rude awakening when you have to hit someone without any hand protection.

There is nothing wrong with using gloves to train with provided you know where they belong in a self defense training program or a sport fighting program.

That difference is very important for you to know.

So here are five differences to give you something to think about.

1. Striking with an unprotected fist is hard.

You have to know how to punch correctly, get used to not wearing gloves, understand which part of the fist to strike with and how to hold your hands to defend yourself. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a whole lot more that needs to be understood.

2. Extremely skilled fighters tend to break their hands in street-fights.

Many fighters get so used to wearing gloves that their hands get more prone to injury, after all wearing gloves and wraps is alot like wearing shoes and socks for the hands.

3. Gloves throw off your distancing.

Most gloves are so padded that they extend anywhere from one to three inches from your fist. This will make your strikes come up short when you take off your gloves as you'll be more used to their striking distance.

4. A gloved fist doesn’t cause damage the same way a bare fist does.

Most strikes with a glove are spread out equally on it's surface but with a fist it is more compact so the impact force is more solid. And a barefist can get into areas that a glove can't.
In other words it hurts more getting hit with a bare fist.

5. A gloved fist turns the punch into a push.

Since the padding of a glove can be very spongy as you hit your target, you'll end up pushing thru the glove as you make contact.

So there you go, think about these five differences as you train, especially if it's for self defence purposes.

Daniel Sambrano