Combination Man!

What’s one of the quickest ways to take a man out of a fight? Body shots.

Boxers and Mixed Martial Arts fighters spend hours an hours building up their abdominal muscles so that they can shrug off heavy body blows.

Repeated heavy punches and leg strikes, to the body, causes a fighter to shift protection to the body and opening up the head to strikes such as the hook and upper cut.

So how do you target the body? Combinations are the bread and butter of the fight game. Three and four punch combination are extremely hard to defense.

For example, you could throw a jab to your opponent’s face, and then follow up with a hook to the body and an upper cut to the chin. Alternatively you could throw a jab, hook and knee combination.

There are many ways to initiate and terminate an attack phase. Practice them on a heavy bag and in your sparring matches. Work on them until you can attack from any position.

Always attack with combinations, single punch attacks often leave you open to counters. If you keep your opponent busy defending against your attacks he has to work much harder to launch his own.

Stay inside of your opponent’s decision loop.

Mix things up. Combinations can and should include punches, kicks and knee strikes. Don’t get into the habit of throwing the same combinations all the time or your opponent will know exactly when to launch his attack. Keep him guessing and responding to you and he won’t have time to make you respond to him.