Placement of defending hands

Nick,

You rightly mentioned in a previous post that if the defending hands are held too close to the jaw they’ll get hit and cannon onto the jaw anyway. I guess that’s one of the significant differences between bare knuckle (street) and Western Boxing where the glove acts as a shock absorber.

What is your preference for placement of the hands when defending (in between laying blows on your opononent)?

Cheers.

That's an almost impossible question to answer verbally mate. I'd need a video clip to do it justice. Let me just say from what I see teaching seminars and travelling round that very very few people have any clue at all with how the stand and cover themselves.

I'll try and elaborate. The problem isn't the end position which (usually) looks fine but how did you go from either a relaxed position into that stance or from a left foot forward position to a right foot forward one.

Let me use an analogy to try and make it clearer. If you're hiding behind a brick building and I have a gun I'm wasting time firing rounds. If your goal is to get to another solid piece of cover I'd waste rounds firing at you once you're behind it. You're danger zone is when you're moving from solid cover to solid cover and that's when I'm going to try and hit you.

Most everyone I've ever seen, outside of Zen Do Kai guys (and so I imagine Goju because that's where the bulk of our stuff came from), look good once there in their stance but there so open the whole way there they may as well give up.

I touch on it on one of my dvd's...I think it's number one and show the proper way into the stance on it.

Nick

Nick,

Thanks for the indepth answer.

Your analogy of moving from solid cover to solid cover is a very good one. I take it in saying that you mean that there are really two transitions between being in solid cover and not, that is:
1/ From the beginning of the conflict, from probably a very neutral position, to a fighting position (into a stance).
2/ From that fighting position that's been attained through delivering a blow (or volley of blows), to then returning to the fighting position (stance) again.

Basically these are the best windows of opportunity for the opponent to strike. Am I reading you correctly??

Also what does the Zen Do Kai stance look like? Is it typically karate styled or different?

Yep, you read it correctly.

The Zen Do Kai stance wasn't really carved in stone...more or less a modified boxer's stance with one hand placed out fairly far the other in close.

I remember Bill Wallace went down to Oz to teach a seminar and he complimented all the ZDK guys' stances as the only ones he thought practical for the ring as well. Class was otherwise full of regular TMA guys from both Kung Fu and Shotokan type styles.

Nick

One of the great things about Nick's method in my view (bare in mind I'm talking from a purely observers viewpoint at this time) is that he talks more in principles than absolutes. On DVD no. 1 he outlines some components of a good stance. Stand how you want to, but having those essential components blended into it makes all the difference.