rear hook is that you are unable to twist your feet and hips to the degree that you can when hooking with your lead. It’s still a deadly blow because it’s traveling a greater distance to the target that the front hand. Be sure to snap your other hand back to your ear for greater hooking power.
Many trainers don’t recommend either the front or rear hook as a lead technique unless you have exceptional speed.
Here are a few circumstances in which a hook works like a charm.
• Attack with a reverse punch to the opponent’s middle and follow with a lead hook to the side of his neck. This works especially well in the street when the guy bends forward from the impact of the reverse punch, thus bringing his head down right there in front of you almost begging to be punched.
• The attacker is in an opposite stance and jabs at you. Slip to his outside and throw a lead hook around his guard and into his neck or ear.
• Your opponent drops his hands when he is within range. Ram a front hook punch into his ear.
• Your opponent throws a reverse punch that you sidestep and block. Throw a hard rear hook into his middle.
I encourage you to work your hook punches on the heavy bag to see if your blows are landing properly. Don’t start out slamming it like a mad man because the bag may show you the errors of your ways by spraining your wrist (been there, done that). The heavy bag is a great teacher and it will tell you faster than any observer whether you are holding your hands correctly. Take it easy at first, and work your way up to harder blows.
Boxers love hook punches for a good reason: They inflict pain.
6. USING DOUBLE HAND PADS
If you don’t use hand pads in your training, you should. There are many great exercises and drills you can do with them, and even more if you have a creative imagination.
Instructor Daniel Alix uses them to not only improve punching but to coordinate footwork as well. Here is one of his drills that is fun and beneficial. We tried it in my school after he sent it to me, and everyone saw a marked improvement in their hand skill by the end of the first training session.
“The instructor holds up two hand pads,” Alix says, “both high, or one high and one low, while you practice simple combinations like high jab and low punch or a high hook and a low punch. After you get good at it, your instructor can wear body-armor so you can throw kicks at him along with your punches on the pads.
“After throwing several combinations, the instructor adds to the exercise by backing up, slowly at first and then faster and faster as you get proficient at pursuing. This gives you a chance to learn how to attack with multiple punches while advancing forward using whatever footwork you want. If you get careless about how you move and attack with your hands, your instructor should throw mock punches or kicks at you to help you get back on track.”
Alix says the next step is for the instructor to move toward you. “He either walks or he throws kicks at you, while you back up and hit the pads with combinations. It’s important that the instructor be the one to control the pace by forcing you to retreat faster and faster as your skill progresses. The instructor can also use walls and corners to try to trap you.
“Another way is to have the instructor wear a boxing glove on one hand, and a focus target on the other. He keeps you on your toes by jabbing with his gloved hand and throwing kicks. As before, he begins by standing in one place. When you are proficient at that level, he advances to moving backward, and when you are responding well with that, he moves toward you. In all stages, he keeps moving the pad around and tossing out the occasional punch and kick. Your job is to avoid getting hit while you attack the moving target.”
This a great exercise that will quickly improve your ability to incorporate your footwork, blocking, evading, and attacking while on the move.
7. GOOFY BAG
Another name for this training device could easily be “The Humbler” since it can make you feel like an idiot if you have never trained on it, or have laid off of it for a few months. What gives the bag its goofy quality is that it’s suspended in the air by an elastic cord attached to its top and another to its bottom. A mere tap sends it into a mad frenzy of bobbing, twirling and erratic spinning. It’s this quality that makes it a good training device.
While martial artists spend an inordinate amount of time working drills that target their opponent’s head, it’s actually not that easy to hit. A fighter with even a little training, or a fighter with no training but a lot of instinct, can easily move his head to avoid being struck. One of the two reasons police agencies don’t hit suspects in the head with their police batons is because most people expect to be struck there, so they are on guard against it. The second reason is that usually the head bleeds like a gaffed fish, even from a minor blow. When a photographer captures the moment of bloody impact for the evening news, it’s not good for public relations, no matter how lowly or deserving the criminal.
The goofiness of this bag makes for an excellent training tool that increases your ability to punch with accuracy. Even the slightest tap will send it jerking and writhing all over the place. But once you get proficient at hitting it, your ability to hit a human head will increase tenfold. And it doesn’t take long to develop proficiency. In fact, you will experience a marked improvement in as little as 30 minutes.
Your First Workout
Assume your fighting stance and stand before the bag. Slam a hard backfist into it and watch it fly away and, quick as a wink, snap back and smash you in the face. When you feel a geyser of blood erupt from your nose, cover it with a towel and end your workout.
Your Second Workout
Wiser from your first training session, you are respectful of the goofy bag and all the surprises of which it’s capable. You have learned that it’s not about hitting hard, but rather hitting with accuracy. Hit it lightly this time and observe how it propels outward and how quickly it returns on its irregular path. Hit it again, and watch it shoot off in diagonal direction and then return quickly on a completely different trajectory, forcing you to lean out of the way. Smack it again, and watch it warp and shimmy and fling back at you from another direction. This time you are taken by surprise, and you slap at it like a kindergartner.
This is all part of the learning process. The more you do it, though, the better you get at it. You may not always be able to read how it’s going to fly out and return, but you will learn to move about and hit it no matter how wobbly and erratic it comes back. In time, you will be dancing, bobbing, weaving, slipping and ducking as you assault it with jabs, backfists and straight punches.
With regular training on the bag, you will be better able to hit your opponent’s moving head. Even if he is good at head evasion, he will never be as tricky as the goofy bag.
8. PUSH-UPS
The motion of the push-up is virtually the same as the jab, reverse punch and other straight-line-type punches. It makes sense then to incorporate lots of push-ups in your conditioning routine, and there is a large variety to use. One time I was teaching a class of 30 students, and as a way of ending the training session, I asked each person to lead the class in a different pushup variation for 10 reps. Not only did each student come up with a different one, we came up with an additional 10 variations for a total of 40. Here are a few:
* Hands spaced wide
* Hands spaced narrow
* One-arm
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